The Mysteries of Marcie Fleach: Chapter 14-Ghosts
by Sketchpad
Summary: At last, Marcie and her friends have returned from the past with the rescued friends and family. However, bureaucracy leads Marcie and Daisy to act recklessly, and in doing so, they are forced to see things in a different way, in the one place neither of them expected to find themselves, in the very ruins of Crystal Cove.
1. Chapter 1

_1~_

"Atlantis, Pompeii, Roanoke, places where civilization once thrived, and then, in an instant, were wiped clean from the Earth, by design, accident, or Mother Nature.

"Months ago, Crystal Cove, California, a once prosperous town whose local claim to fame was that it was "The most hauntedest place on Earth," tragically joined that sad elite, prompting conspiracy buffs, the world over, to still debate over the mysterious cause for this quaint town's violent end.

"Today, as state officials focus on the ongoing clean-up, their attempts are being stymied by, yet another mystery. Construction crews and rescue workers are having their efforts hampered by vandalism done to their vehicles and equipment, and some have said that they've seen, and been attacked by, some sort of large specter, perhaps the vengeful spirit of the town's dead. Local police are looking into the possibility of vagrants or squatters making themselves at home among the ruins.

"This is Chaz Manning, WBNS."

The coifed reporter signaled to his cameraman to end taping, and, jadedly, looked around at the devastation that still spanned the breadth and width of Crystal Cove.

Even in the light of day, among the looted and destroyed buildings and homes, the quiet pall of mass death still lingered over the town. The ocean breezes would sing a soft dirge through the dead trees, blowing the pong of rot out to sea, only to call gulls and other scavenging birds of prey inland, to find new, undiscovered bodies to feast over and pick clean.

Chaz, himself, didn't want to explore or move further into the town to select a place to shoot his report. The air, itself, seemed to warn him away, carrying a vibration of threat in every direction.

"This place has seen better days, huh, Barry?" the reporter asked, more to settle his nerves than to just state the obvious.

Barry, his cameraman, was about to put his gear into the nearby news van, when he saw a pair of figures approaching at high speed.

The one ahead seemed washed-out in the strong sunlight, almost giving the illusion of being near-translucent, the one coming from behind was larger, robed and almost shimmering with a soft glow of colored light trailing it.

Barry blinked the obvious trick-of-the-eye away, and when he looked again, not only were the figures closer, with the one up ahead, screaming, they were, also, making a beeline straight for either both men, or their van.

Chaz turned his head to the cry and gasped, "Survivors!"

He straightened his tie and gestured to the duo, smiling with perfect teeth, and asking the foremost one, "Excuse me! Chaz Manning, WBNS. Are you two survivors of the tragedy that befell this once idyllic town? Do you have anything to say to your viewers?"

Despite the misgivings this scene was giving him, Barry had raised his camera to witness it, but then, was puzzled because he couldn't see any one there, other than Chaz.

The figure the reporter was interviewing, screamed, "Help me!" before blindly running into and _through_ a stunned Chaz. The other figure, now seen to be chasing the first one, stopped his pursuit near the reporter, and raised his hand, like a judge pronouncing sentence.

A ray of concentric energy sprang from its open palm, reached out across space, and snared the panicked apparition before he could pass into the van to hide.

The captured spirit struggled and tried to fly to higher ground, but he couldn't resist the grip of the energy field that began dragging him back into the presence of his robed pursuer.

"Please! I'm just looking for my wife," the ghost wailed. "She died somewhere around here!"

"I know," the taller ghost hissed. "She was delectable."

The ray's energy rings, suddenly, changed color, and the ghost who was encircled by it, cried out in apparent pain, as he began to break apart, visually, until only a pattern of glowing balls of light remained, which was then drawn into the palm of the other ghost's closing hand.

Blown away by the spectacle of that event, Chaz whispered to Barry, "Did you get all of that?"

His cameraman, also in awe, but not wanting to be yelled at for not having footage of the existence of ghosts, on hand, nodded slightly and murmured, "Yeah."

The robed spirit began to glow with a new energy as the power of his prey flowed through him. He, then turned to the two humans who bore witness to his feast, and pointed a clawed finger at the tip of Chaz's nose.

"You, reporter," the creature intoned. "You will be my herald. Tell your viewers, tell the world, that these dead lands are the hunting grounds of The Phanplasm!"

To punctuate his announcement, The Phanplasm raised a hand, waved at the news van, and sent it tumbling into a high arc in the sky, to land, crushed, against the gutted foundation of a nearby building.

"Now, leave, before you suffer a worse fate far _worse_ than dying!"

"Wh-What would that be, Mr. Phanplasm, sir?" Chaz, ever the reporter, asked in a sputter.

"Being devoured by _me_!" The Phanplasm hissed in a sepulchral voice that spoke of graveyards and deep, sorrowful loss.

The two men stumbled and sprinted, in the wake of the creature's laugh, back the way they originally drove into town, with dreams of Pulitzers, and the ancient fears of the supernatural, driving them on with each panicked step.

* * *

The sunset of 1871 Crystal Cove fell away into the usual, visual madness of the time vortex, once more. With their precious cargo riding along with the "crew" with the Mark II, it was a cramped, shuffling, and sometimes, painful affair, but Marcie and Daisy couldn't be happier with their success, especially since Marcie bade Velma to sit on her lap for the duration of the trip.

A feeling of shifting pseudo-gravity, suddenly, tugged at them, and then, the chaos of the vortex relented into a hazy, blue vista, all sensation of motion, ceased.

As did everyone else's motion and biological functions, yet death did not come over them. Marcie's brain couldn't process thought, couldn't access memory, and couldn't perceive people in glowing blue, counteractive outfits, like hazmat suits, only bulkier, come out of nowhere and haul the petrified bodies of Velma, Daphne, Freddy, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo from the time machine.

Trapped like insects in the amber-like stillness of a stasis field, the rest didn't recover from the restriction until the Mark II, finally, materialized on the launch platform in the center of Hangar A, where they had escaped from Sundial, mere moments before, according to the instruments displayed on one of the Mark II's touch screens.

* * *

After a luxury of hot showers and a full meal in Sundial's facility, what followed next was a series of blood, cognitive, and physical tests, as well as a full debriefing of what eras they visited and what they did there. Despite their disruptive presence in Sundial, they were making up for it in crucial data that was worth their weight in gold.

A knock on the door of the Head Director's office brought Schrödinger out of his studies of their test results, and he bade the visitor enter.

Marcie and Daisy filed in and marched up to the desk to glower at the, otherwise, nonplussed cat.

"Where are the other two?" Schrödinger asked them. "Herring and Wyatt?"

"Your people took them home," Daisy said. "I'd like to take my sister home, too. Where is she?"

"And Velma?" Marcie added.

"You know," Schrödinger said, as if he hadn't heard them at all. "I've been going over your test results and debriefings and they are _fascinating_ reading. You should be proud to be America's very first chrononauts."

"Yippee-skipee," Marcie deadpanned. "I'll save you a ticker-tape parade, if you'll just tell us where our friends are, Schro."

"Must you _call_ me that?" he sighed. "They're in an Un-Time Booth, in stasis, like your bodies were on E-001. We detected your return to our present time, so we over-rid the controls and sent you all into an Un-Time Booth, first. Then, we separated you from them. Your friends are now in quarantine."

"Quarantine? Are they sick? Did they catch something from the past?" Daisy asked, haunted with thoughts of long-dealt-with contagions ravaging her sister's body.

"No, although they will be given a thorough check-up when they do come out," the cat explained. "They're in isolation, right now, because, as humans love to do, you went off half-cocked, instead of waiting, like Nova and I asked."

A fluffy Cocker Spaniel's tail flashed from behind the desk, and then, Nova padded out to meet the humans.

"Let me say that I'm so glad that you succeeded in finding your friends, and that they're safe and whole, but Schrödinger is right, Marcie. You should have waited until Mystery Incorporated reached Arkham, Massachusetts, first."

Before either girl could argue on the point, a buzz sounded from the intercom on the desk.

"Sir, communication is ready, now," said the secretary, from outside.

Schrödinger pawed a button to reply. "Excellent. I'll patch it in here."

"Yes, sir."

The cat walked over to another button on the desk, batted it with a paw, and the sound of small motors hummed across the room.

On the wall of one side of the office, the canvas of a large painting began to slide away from its wide frame, revealing a flat-screen monitor. What Marcie saw after that twisted her stomach into a knot of betrayal and the haughtiest of righteous indignation.

"What do you want, liar?" she hissed at the pensive, real-time visage of Velma Dinkley coming from her laptop's webcam. Behind her, the rest of her friends stood by, worryingly, watching their collective chickens coming home to roost.

"Marcie, let me explain."

"What's there to explain?" Marcie asked, calmly, at first, then yelled, "You led me on!"

"You led us both on, _Daphne Double_ ," Daisy added, venomously. "You tricked Mom, Dad and the rest of us into thinking you were _our_ Daphne. Why?"

"Re'er sorry."

"Muzzle it, you," Marcie chastised the Great Dane.

"We didn't mean to, honest!" confessed Freddy, trying to placate. "We were just so confused about everything. We had just survived The Evil Entity, then we were brought to this un-destroyed Crystal Cove."

"Yeah, man," Shaggy added. "And, like, the next thing we know, we're met by friends and family who told us we did things, or were _going_ to do things...that we never did."

"Freddy and I didn't say anything, then, Daisy," Daphne said. "Because we were in just too much shock."

"Culture shock, to be more accurate," the alternate Velma elaborated. "It was only after I talked to you, Marcie, that I figured out what had happened. That we were taken from our home universe and placed into this one."

"And you didn't bother to come back and tell me this?" Marcie huffed. "C'mon, Velma, or whoever you are, this Marcie you're talking to. Out of all of us, I would have been the most amenable to whatever had happened to you, and if you had to tell anybody else, I would have been there to back you up, but you didn't trust me to understand, did you? You didn't trust _me_. Period."

There were few times in Velma's life where she was so guilty of something that she was struck dumb in shame. This was one for the books. She was, then, rescued from the uncomfortable silence by the following question.

"Why did you leave?" Marcie asked. She wanted to ask, "Why did you leave _me_?" but thought better of it. She wanted answers, and like any good scientist, she knew that emotions could taint an, otherwise, informative investigation.

Velma sighed, the guilt never leaving her. "We realized that these other people, the _other_ us, were good people, but they weren't us. We're detectives, where we come from, and these people were just too..."

She sought for the right word, but could only come up with, "Ordinary, successful, but ordinary. But then, we received a letter from Mr. E, someone we, sort of, worked under in our timeline, but this was a new one, who knew about our situation and offered us a lifetime of mysteries to solve over at Miskatonic University. He enrolled us, there, but we had to go right away."

"So you left," Marcie finished for her. "No explanations. No goodbyes. You just left. What a cop-out. You don't strike me as immature, Velma, so, why do that? Why tell yourselves that left to solve mysteries, when all you _really_ did was run away from being adults?"

That assertion hit Velma and the others, like a physical blow. "What," she asked, stunned.

"You were told that you had these happy, successful lives," Marcie pressed. "Lives of promise and potential, and what was the reaction to all of that? All of you slipping out of town, like criminals."

"And you're selfish, to boot," Daisy added. "None of you cared what _we_ thought. Didn't you think, at all, about what your folks would think when you didn't come home, later that night?"

"And the sad thing is that you all thought that running away from your problems was the right thing to do," Marcie continued. "But, here's the kicker. There were no problems to run _from_. But, if you're so serious about finding ghosts, just look in a mirror, because that's all you guys are, haunting one town after another, looking for the next spook to keep you from growing up."

"Now, that's not fair, Marcie!" Freddy interjected, strongly. "We love being detectives! It's our lives."

"Then, why didn't you come back and _tell_ everybody that?" she shot back, then returned her attention to Velma. "Your parents were worried sick about you, Velma, I mean, _my_ Velma's parents were worried, even if they were too strong to admit it, sometimes."

She turned her attention to the guilty party behind Velma. "All of your parents and friends were worried about you."

"But, like, you weren't really our friends and families, man," Shaggy explained their weak defense. "They're gone."

That moved Daisy, momentarily. Even she couldn't dismiss someone's loss, but the issue still needed to addressed.

"I'm sorry about that, but that's not the point. How would we have known that, if you never bothered to tell us?" Daisy countered, icily. "And why is it taking you so long to reach Massachusetts? You all left months ago."

"Re've been doing rhat re do best," Scooby confessed. "Solring mysteries arong the ray,"

"Really? Well, guess what? We've been solving mysteries, too," Marcie said, calmly. "And you know what _we_ deduced? That you guys, never trusted that good people would, eventually, understand who you were, let those good people think you were their loved ones and friends with your silence, and then, destroyed those same people, by up and leaving, and making them grow old before their time worrying about you. You would have made that Evil Entity I was told about, look like Grandma Moonbeam."

"Hey, you don't know how evil the Evil Entity was!" Freddy argued. "When he appeared in Crystal Cove, he ruined so many innocent lives!"

"Apparently, he was going for your land speed record," Marcie deadpanned.

Inwardly, Velma's will to justify her actions was, sufficiently, weakened by the barrage of righteous condemnation, but, still, she summoned the courage to try and explain her part in this mess.

"Marcie...I'm truly sorry that I didn't say anything about us, before, and...you were right. I _was_ leading you on, for a long time, until I felt so guilty about not being able to tell you the truth, that I decided to stop our web-chats, altogether. I didn't want to keep hurting you, and I hoped that, by the time you knew the truth, we'd be so far away that you'd forget all about me. Stupid, huh?"

Marcie felt like a fool exposed to the world. Her secrets, desires, and problems were all confided to this Velma, tears were shed and yearnings, expressed. But, all of that was for nothing. Nothing but ironic entertainment for a stranger in the skin of her beloved friend. She hung her head in quiet agony and said nothing for long seconds.

"Marcie?" Velma whispered, seeing the silent, brutal effects of her betrayal in real-time. "Please, say something." A world away, her Marcie had died for her and her friends to succeed, and this Marcie deserved better treatment than what she gave her, she knew.

The only thing Marcie could hear and feel was the sad thump of her broken heart, as she, quietly, told Velma, "I don't ever want to talk to you, again."

That Velma once had a Marcie as a rival, and then, a friend, a dear one, and in all of the time that she knew her, she never once hear those words come from her. They crushed Velma more than any curse she was prepared to hear. She couldn't bring herself to beg Marcie to say anything else, couldn't ask for her forgiveness, and say anything, herself, out of shame.

Both girls, silently, stood by their cameras, bridged, no longer, by a friendship, even if it was false, but by mutual pain.

Schrödinger decided that nothing more could be gained from this breakdown. He tapped the button on the desk, mercifully, cutting off communications between the two of them.

"I'm sorry you had to go through any of that. Both of you," the cat said, softly, to Marcie and Daisy. "If you must know, they're in Maryland, now. We approached them a few days ago, and wanted to give you a chance to touch base with them before they reach Arkham."

"Yeah, thanks," Daisy said, sarcastically. "Good talk. Now, lets talk about getting our people out of that bubble, or booth, of yours."

Schrödinger sat on the center of the broad desk, saying to them, "Remember when Mystery Incorporated entered your universe, and their existence shoved their doubles into the past?"

Daisy knew that she wasn't up on temporal events and theories, and so, rightly, assumed that he was, really, directing the question towards Marcie, who still fumed, silently, beside her.

The cat continued. "If your group were to step outside of the Un-Time Booth, _now_ , while Mystery Inc. was still out and about, then _Mystery Inc._ would be the ones to get snapped back to their original timeline."

A black light bulb suddenly lit up in Marcie's brain with dark understanding, and she spoke. "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, huh? Good! Maybe they _should_ go back to their universe, pick up the pieces, and move on, instead of disrupting everything, _here_ , just because they bothered to clean up your mess."

"I don't understand why you're both so upset over this," Schrödinger sighed and looked heavenward. "Your friends and family are safe in the Booth. Time doesn't exist within it. While your friends are in there, they won't be pushed back into the past, so it's the safest place to be, until this blows over."

"Honestly, at first, we didn't know that our kindness would hurt the people who were already living here," Nova admitted.

"We just had to hope that the doubles were smart enough to survive in whatever era they were bounced to," the cat added.

"You know, for someone who likes to hear the sound of his own voice, you don't hear yourself!" Marcie said. "What if you were wrong? What if they didn't survive? What's the Annunaki word for 'oops?'"

"Until very recently, one we rarely found ourselves saying," sniffed the cat.

"Marcie, Daisy, I can assure you that all will be well, as soon as Mystery Incorporated reaches Professor Ellison," Nova coaxed. "In the meantime, I'm afraid that your friends will have to spend some time in the Booth, for their own protection."

Marcie glanced at Nova, realizing what was happening, what was always happening when Schrödinger and she went at it, it seemed.

Nova was the peacemaker, the diplomat, the kindly voice to counter the acerbic pomposity of the cat. Marcie knew that Nova was trying to smooth relations, all around, but she wasn't in the mood to be in the center of a 'Good Annunaki-Bad Annunaki' scenario.

"Spend some time?" she fumed. "Ugh! Multiple universes and several centuries, and we _still_ have to wait to be our people. Why don't your precious Mystery Incorporated stop wasting time and go straight to Miskatonic? Why should we have to wait until _they_ finish their magical mystery tour, to get on with our lives?"

"Why bother, Marcie?" Daisy scoffed, glaring at the animals. "Don't you know anything? We don't rate next to the mighty _Mystery Incorporated_. Let's get out of here."

Despite wanting to expend every calorie arguing the point to Schrödinger, a part of Marcie, a dark part of her, wanted to punish him and the outsiders for all she went through, and just then, a deliciously, devious idea gave her the proper nudge to achieve such an end.

"Let's," she agreed, following Daisy out of the office, and causing Nova to look at Schrödinger with big, worried eyes.


	2. 2

_2~_

The facility was positioned deep under the building to receive the maximum amount of attention and power available to maintain it, and to keep the facility as shielded from an unwitting populace as possible, in the event of a catastrophe.

That kind of knowledge didn't deter Marcie or Daisy after they disembarked from the elevator and walked through the small, corridor maze of Stasis Management and Control.

Following the floor maps that were hung at intervals on the walls, they continued their trek until they came to a T-section.

Sneaking over to its left corner, they peered slowly around it. Up ahead, two Clockwatchers, Sundial's private security force, stood, flanking a door marked Stasis Chamber 1. The guards wore only their livery, an ID badge, a key card, and no other protection, which suited the two girls fine.

The duo ducked back around the corner, with Marcie, then handing a small capsule to Daisy.

"Okay," Marcie whispered. "Don't forget to hold your breath and close your eyes."

"Right," Daisy said, nervously, fingering her Discourager, and then hiding it within her closed hand. Then, they both took a breath and began their act of defiance.

The Clockwatchers grew alert as they saw the two teens approach their length of hallway, as non-chalantly as they could appear.

Clockwatcher Number One brought up a hand to halt them, saying, "I'm sorry, you two, but non-personnel are not allowed down here."

"Not even technicians?" Daisy countered.

"You don't look like technicians," Clockwatcher Number Two said.

"I'm not," Daisy lied. "I'm in Sales." She nodded over to Marcie, who surreptitiously moved next to Number Two. " _She's_ the technician."

"Oh, really?" asked Number One, as unconvinced at their ploy, as he was amused at the distraction. "Then, where are your badges?"

Inwardly, they both shook. They were so focused on getting this done that they had forgotten something rather crucial. Disguises.

 _'We can kick ourselves, later,'_ Daisy thought, jumping onto another lie as soon as it sounded good to her.

"Well, like I said, I work in the Sales Department. I'm so good at selling things, that I convince security to let me in to work, every morning," she boasted.

"Uh, yeah," Marcie added, hesitantly. "And besides, I'm wearing glasses. What kind of technician would I be if I didn't?"

"Well, we're carrying tasers," Number Two pointed out. "So, what kind of guards would _we_ be?"

Marcie ignored the two guards, looked past them over to Daisy, and whispered, "Tasers? I didn't see any tasers. Did you?"

Daisy shook her head and whispered back, "No. Do we keep going?"

"We might as well."

Both girls, satisfied that they were standing close enough to their individual targets, manipulated their hands, slightly, to produce their Discouragers, unseen by the Clockwatchers, quietly held their breaths, and then, dashed the capsules to the floor.

The combined, non-lethal clouds filled that section of the hallway quickly. The guards, not seeing the girls leave the area, assumed that the chemical smoke wasn't a soporific, and tried to stay at their posts, despite their eyes beginning to water freely and their breathing becoming more labored.

As one, they clumsily produced their own non-lethals from holsters in the back of their belts, but they couldn't draw a bead on the teens, as their eyes were burning too badly.

All four figures were swallowed deep by the thick miasma, with only the sounds of confused struggle announcing that anyone was in there. Then, the mist, suddenly, gave the appearance of a small thundercloud, as a crackle sounded, and two flashes of electric-blue light illuminated its depths, followed by the thunder of a pair of heavy thuds.

The door opened, drawing two breathless girls and some of the Discourager cloud into the chamber.

Marcie and Daisy stumbled and jogged further into the spacious room to get away from the fumes, and then stopped to catch their breath.

"Don't pretend that went according to plan," Daisy wheezed, holding a purloined key card and a taser.

"You're right," Marcie panted, holding her own similar items. "It was better, because not even the guards knew what we were going to do."

Daisy stood up and took a look around. The room was large and gave the low hum of constant power flowing into it. Filling its interior and arranged like some grand geometry exhibit, were glowing cubes of various dimensions, small, tall, wide and long.

Each cube had a Y-shaped lock pedestal, with a card slot built into the ends of each upright arm and a lock/unlock button in its center where the arms conjoined. The simultaneous scan of two key cards was needed to release its contents.

"Hey, Marcie, check it out," said Daisy, walking over to a stasis cube and looking into its contents: a juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Marcie approached, then noticed a small cadre of armed Redcoats in dreamless sleep within another cube.

Thus, they both moved through the outer rings of this historical museum of the living, seeing preserved pirates, Roman soldiers and barbarians, past citizens presumed lost in their native times, Nazi officers, and even a extraterrestrial pilot and its small crew, while they wandered deeper and deeper towards the cubes that lay in the center of the room.

"They have to be around here, somewhere," Marcie said to herself, moving past a single, contained pair of mating dodoes. Then, her eyes caught the sight of a white sweater, and she approached that particular cube.

She gasped upon, finally, seeing the familiar quintet of Scooby, Shaggy, Freddy, Daphne and a still sleeping Velma.

"Daisy, I found them!" Marcie called out, staring at Velma in relief. In her repose, she never looked so at peace to her.

A running Daisy soon reached Marcie, and they both stood and watched the people that they risked time travel to bring back. It was a somber, sobering feeling that came over them. They felt older and worn-out from the experience, and yet, wiser and more powerful for it, as well.

Marcie fingered her card, anxiously. She couldn't help thinking that this was going to be a slap in the face to Sundial, whose resources allowed her to rescue their people, in the first place.

As if Daisy had read her thoughts, she said, off-handedly, "You know that we're going to make Sheriff Stone's day with this stunt, right?"

Marcie sighed in acknowledgement. The sheriff lived to prove that she was not only wasting her time solving mysteries before he could, but that her actions were, ultimately, costly to the town, either financially or socially. If he knew that she was, _blatantly_ , breaking the law...

She shuddered. Thoughts of spending any amount of hard time in Crystal Cove's prison would make her time spent in the sheriff's holding cells seem like a summer retreat.

"Yeah, and I know that criminal trespass won't be the only charge he'll stick us with, too. But, I'm sick and tired of the run-around. I don't owe this Mystery Incorporated anything," she defended. "Still, I don't want to get you in trouble, Daisy. If you want to bail, I'll understand."

"Are you kidding?" Daisy exclaimed. "I didn't come all this way to _not_ see my sister back with her family. We'll see this through to the end, Marcie. Besides, if worse come to worse, my folks have some of the best lawyers around. We can always sue Sundial for wrongful marooning in time!"

Marcie had to smile at that. She held up her key card. "Okay, let's get them out of here, so Mystery Inc. goes back to their own timeline, and good riddance."

"Good riddance," Daisy concurred, raising her key card. Then, she cocked her head to one side, listening. "Do you hear something?"

"Nope."

They both brought their keys to the slots, counted to three, and then, inserted them at the same time.

Marcie moved her hand over the lit, center button. One swat on it, and it would be the beginning of their lives, again, and end of the troublesome Mystery Incorporated's in this Crystal Cove.

"Send me a postcard," she sneered.

The sound of paws scrabbling across the floor in a mad dash, alerted them to a frantic Nova bounding among the cubes to reach them.

She cried out a single word, "No!"

Before Marcie's hand went down, there was a blinding flash of light from an unseen source, and both Marcie and Daisy's world flew far from them.

* * *

A full, white moon hung low in a cloudless night sky. Three large ships were pulling silently from a moonlit harbor, after finishing their resupply and allowing hosts of missionaries to board, on their way to the far corners of the world where they would work to proselytize for the masses.

Three miles out, the various captains of the vessels spotted a flotilla of smaller ships making their way towards the harbor. Their flags flew the colors of a friendly nation, and so the captains were not alarmed.

Because the missionary fleet was sailing in a tight protective group, the individual ships of the incoming flotilla broke formation, to maneuver out of the way of it.

However, it wasn't until a few minutes later that something seemed amiss. Only half the flotilla's number avoided the fleet, but the other half turned, tightly, into the night breeze to sail in the same direction as the missionary ships.

That, to the confused captains, looked like a perplexing thing for the smaller ships to do. The first flotilla's half, then banked into a wide, circling flank behind the rear of the fleet.

The blare of a horn trumpeted in the dark, and then, the second half of the flotilla, up ahead, heeled over and began to follow the first in circling the missionary ships. Then, their cannons spoke.

Utilizing their combined speed, team work and firepower, the flotilla corralled the fleet and tore into them, like a pack of hunting dogs on deer.

When it was, finally, over, the flotilla, now bearing the green and gold colors of Lord Greenman, slipped away into the distance, while the last of the wrecked missionary ships and their priestly cargo, slipped away into the cold, dark, fathomless waters.

* * *

The explosion of white that, mysteriously, bloomed in the depths of Marcie's mind had long transmuted into the darkness of a timeless sleep. Oblivious to the world around her, she didn't feel the breeze on her face, or the vacillating stench of dead bodies that it carried on the wind.

Gradually, a sense of time let itself be felt within her consciousness, and a soft, constant tapping was being acknowledged by her senses, specifically on her cheek.

Slow awareness came upon her, and Marcie opened her eyes to find herself lying on a cracked pavement, looking up at a sky dotted with scavenging birds. She turned her head, to see a concerned Daisy kneeling by her side, and Nova's tongue darting upon her upturned cheek, in an attempt to awaken her.

"What...What happened?" Marcie asked, groggily. "Where are we, and why does it smell like road kill?"

"It's hard for even _me_ to believe it," Daisy said, looking around at the trash-and debris-strewn ground. "But, it looks like we're still in town. I think."

"You think?" That didn't sound comforting to Marcie.

"It just feels...off."

"What do you mean 'off?'"

"Well, look around," Daisy said. "Where is everybody?"

Marcie, gingerly, got to her feet, her eyes catching sight of the closest thing in her view, the marred and crumbling facade of a large, Mission-style building to her side. Turning, she faced the still standing ruins of Crystal Cove High School.

Confused, Marcie muttered, "I don't think we're on a movie set." Then, she turned to face the, suspiciously, quiet Annunaki. "Nova, what's going on, here? What did you do?"

"What I had to do to stop you from bringing Mystery Incorporated back here," Nova said.

"Back here?" Those two words answered more questions in Marcie's mind than even she knew to ask, and made her, extremely, nervous. "You mean...that this is _their_ Crystal Cove? Their universe? Why did you bring us here? We don't belong here! Take us back!"

"Not yet," Nova said, simply.

"Not yet?" Marcie was starting to have her fill of Nova's cryptic, zen-like demeanor, under the circumstances. "Take us back home, you...you cosmic _kidnapper_!"

Nova glanced around, pensively, as if listening out for a predator. "Shh! We have to be careful, here. Somebody might hear you."

"And that's a bad thing, how?" asked Daisy. "We're going to need a place to crash when it gets dark. Y'know, civilization?"

"Because, I am the only one who can return you to your universe, and that might be hard to do, if we're caught trespassing in a disaster area."

"Point goes to you," Marcie sighed, begrudgingly.

"Ah, no problem!" Daisy brightened. "Now, that I think about it, we can go to my parents' house, and I can pull a Mystery Inc., there."

Nova cocked her head, quizzically, to the side. "A what?"

"I'll pass myself off as their daughter," Daisy interpreted, coolly.

"There's no need," Nova said.

"How come?"

"Because, apart from the construction crews and rescue workers," the dog said. "You, Marcie, and I are the only living people in this town."

It felt like an anvil had fallen on their heads. Daisy and Marcie gave each other uncomfortable glances, while their stomachs grew slightly cool at that dour knowledge.

Daisy, suddenly, imagined a, now, looted and abandoned mansion, bereft of the lives of slacker siblings, or slightly judgmental parents. As for Marcie, she, grimly, wondered how her home, or the amusement park, had fared, or, more personally, how her father died.

Marcie shook her head of that, at once. She had to remember that Winslow was still alive, estranged to her, but alive. Yet, it was getting too easy making the possessive mistake that the deceased Winslow Fleach, here, was her father, and that the house and the amusement park, whatever their ultimate condition, was hers, as well.

Annoyed, Marcie glanced back at Nova. "Are you going to take us back, or not, Nova?"

"Not yet," the dog maintained.

Forgetting that she wasn't truly a dog, Marcie hoped to stare Nova down into changing her mind, simply, by dint of her being human, but, eventually, she could see, behind those large, friendly, brown eyes, that the Annunaki remained resolute to her decision.

"Let's steal a car, and get to the mansion," Marcie sighed to Daisy, heading towards the school parking lot, cluttered with abandoned cars.

It was quiet except for the sound of slow-moving tires crunching on the expelled grit of craters and uprooted slabs of street, as a purloined automobile with a cracked windshield, maneuvered through the town.

"So, the whole town was fighting this Evil Entity guy?" Daisy asked Nova, watching the destroyed urban landscape slowly pass by her as she drove. "That's why it looks like this?"

"Yes and no," said the dog from the back seat.

Marcie rolled her eyes. "Typical Annunaki answer," she groused to herself, as she watched the ruination go by from her passenger window.

Nova ignored her jab and continued. "It's hard to tell where the death toll was greatest: in the streets, or in the caves under the town, where a good deal of the fighting took place. The people, originally captured and put to work by Professor Pericles-"

"The Creationex mascot?" Daisy asked, almost laughing.

"No," Nova explained. "In this universe, he was the previous Mystery Incorporated's mascot and pet to Ricky Owens, known here as Mr. E.. Anyway, they, eventually, rose up and fought back to free themselves from Pericles' robot soldiers. What they didn't know was that they would soon face something even more deadly than mere machines."

"The Evil Entity?"

Nova nodded, solemnly. "Yes, and his horde of minions, who brought him citizens to devour for their fear, just as much as for their flesh. They were snatched from the streets, or torn from their homes, and those that resisted too much, were killed where they stood."

"But, Mystery Incorporated did save the day, right?" Marcie asked, sarcastically.

"They engaged The Evil Entity, directly, while his servants slaughtered the town, feeding him. He was too massive and powerful for them to do both. Yes, Crystal Cove and its people fell that day, but what was that, compared to the fate of an entire world?"

Marcie shrugged off the argument. Although it tickled her, darkly, to notice that some of Nova's calmness was wearing away, ever so slightly, because for a moment, she sounded like someone familiar. "Whatever, _Schrödinger_. All I know is that my dad is-"

She caught herself, again, hating what this place was doing to her, unconsciously, associating her Crystal Cove with this one, identifying her father with a dead one. Why? They weren't the same, and yet, something in her mind kept, easily, making connections between them on an emotional level, and that angered her. The last thing she wanted was to empathize with the saviors of this world, if not this sad, sacrificed town.

"Your dad is what?" Daisy asked, overhearing.

"Nothing," said Marcie, failing to come up with a lie. "I was just thinking out loud."

"Oh, okay," said Daisy, slowing down to drive around another sinkhole in the street. "I'm sorry it's taking so long to get to the mansion, guys, but these roads are murder. It's like a war zone around here."

"It was," Nova said. "The greatest cosmic war ever waged was fought on the most unlikeliest of battlefields."

"Are you sure that no one else survived?" Daisy asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid."

"Daisy, don't you know better than to doubt the senses of an Annunaki?" Marcie mocked. "Her 'death-sense' must be all a-tingle."

"Yes," Nova said, pensively. "We Annunaki can sense life and death as easily as you can smell a flower, but I feel something, as well. Ever since we arrived, there has been...an uneasiness, a lingering malaise hanging in the air. Like a chord echoing long after the notes were played. It worries me."

Daisy, absently, imagined the final note in an evil version of The Beatles' _A Day In The Life_ , and then, cursed herself for her momentary lack of focus.

A yellowish, blocky shape, a driven backhoe, suddenly, trundled out of the mouth of a small side street at a fair speed, too fast for its driver to avoid the stolen car.

Daisy's attention, however, caught sight of the bright color of the construction vehicle at the last minute, and, with frantic spins of the steering wheel, she swerved the car out of the way before it t-boned the other vehicle.

She missed the digger, however, she failed to react to what was ahead, next.

The car bounced out of a pothole, and then, rolled up onto a raised slab of street that settled into an incline, which tilted the conveyance in an awkwardly upward angle, and then, came to a sharp halt, when the front driver-side tire got stuck over the accidental ramp's lip.

While the passengers attempted to recover from the sudden scare, the backhoe rumbled to a stop, and the irate driver, a construction worker, leaned out of the reinforced cab, yelling, "Hey! What are you doing here? This is a disaster area. Back that car up, and get outta here!"

"We'd love that, really," Daisy said with a mock-innocent shrug to the man, from her window. "But, Precious Pupp, back here, kidnapped us, and won't take us back home. Crazy day, isn't it?"

A brief look of confusion crossed the construction worker's face, then he pulled his walkie-talkie free from his tool belt, and reported to his supervisor on why he would be late getting to the next work site.

Marcie glanced at the back seat to Nova, whispering, "You know, you can still fix this, if you take us back."

Nova said nothing, but instead, gave a bark, and put on the airs of a normal Cocker Spaniel.

"Oh, _now_ you act like a dog, huh?" Daisy groused. "Well, I hope you like being in a pet carrier while we try to explain ourselves."

She leaned back to look out of the rear window and saw a cadre of other construction and rescue workers gathering a few yards away, attracted to the near-accident, and then approach the hung-up car, from behind.

"Explain ourselves?" Marcie chuckled, mirthlessly, while she heard them coming closer to the car. "We're in the middle of this, and even _I_ wouldn't want to believe me, if I told myself."


	3. 3

_3~_

The managerial site for the state-hired, private, debris removal contractor was a fenced off street just outside the downtown area that was selected due to it being more intact that many outside of its neighborhood.

A core of portable offices, serving the crew chiefs, foremen, and their government liaisons from the state capital, sat on supports, surrounded by a constantly bustling fleet of dump trucks, skip loaders, backhoes, knuckle boom trucks, and bulldozers that tracked muddy, overturned earth onto the street from their wide-treaded tires, and filled the air with the idling purr, or the revving roar of engines, and the heady scent of diesel exhaust.

In the tiny waiting area of one of the prefab offices, Marcie, seated next to an equally pensive Daisy, gave a distracted glance out of one of the nearby windows, saw a dump truck parking, then continued to run desperate escape scenarios in her mind, each one more dubious than the last.

"I feel like I'm in the principal's office," Daisy muttered.

"I wouldn't mind being sent," Marcie said, quietly. "At least I'd be closer to home." She gave a baleful look to the floor, where Nova was, silently, lying between the girls, waiting, as they waited, for the universe to make the next move.

A helmeted man with the ID badge of a crew chief approached, from the innards of the office, towards them.

"Okay, now, where did you girls come from?" he asked. "You're not supposed to be here. This is a federal disaster area. Civilians are not allowed to come back, right now."

Marcie gave a slight look towards Daisy, a signal of readiness to recite a story they concocted and rehearsed, earlier, when their busy captors took their attention from them.

"We're from out of town," she said. "We had relatives, here, and when we heard about what happened, we came to go look for them."

The man's face fell. It came with the job to bear the kind of news he would tell them, and it never got easier. "I'm sorry to tell the both of you that rescue teams have been going over this town with a fine-toothed comb, and we haven't found any survivors, yet, but you can tell us who they are, so we can tell the teams, when they go out searching, again."

"I'm looking for my father, Winslow Fleach," Marcie told him.

"My folks were Barty and Nan Blake, and my sisters were Dawn, Dorothy, Delilah...and Daphne," Daisy sighed.

"Okay, after we escort you to Gatorsburg, we'll be on the look-out for them," said the crew chief, solemnly.

Some would have called him jaded; maybe even cold, but he would have preferred pragmatic. In his heart, he knew that there was, probably, no hope of ever finding any of their loved ones alive in that blighted, crumbling wasteland, but he, also, ran into enough families who were distraught at their losses not to try and comfort them, in some fashion.

 _'Anyway,'_ he thought. _'Once they spend time in Gatorsburg, they would be somebody else's problem.'_

Marcie and Daisy gave slight frowns and nodded in understanding when they were told where they were going, the chief thinking that they were just worried about their, obviously, dead kin.

In truth, the girls were not too bothered by that. As long as they stuck with Nova, they knew that they had a way home, and were relatively fine. But, just then, Marcie was given a clue as to why Nova wouldn't bring them back home, when she saw the dog's reaction.

Nova lifted her head after the chief mentioned Gatorsburg, too quickly to be about something else, and then whimpered, softly.

 _'Cause and effect,'_ thought Marcie, with some satisfaction. _'So much for her poker face.'_ Obviously, the fact that they might have to be taken three miles from town didn't make the cosmic being sanguine.

Satisfied that no more could be done for them, the chief was about to leave to arrange their escort, when a construction worker under him, entered the office, looking none too happy.

"What wrong?" asked the chief. "I thought you guys were going to that Fearatorium supermarket to tear it down."

"We were, but it's happened again! That thing, that... _Phanplasm_ is out there, controlling our rigs to drive them into buildings, and scaring the men off! Not too far from here!"

The chief gave a heavy sigh of thought. "The boss is not going to like these delays. We're on a schedule. We'll lose our contract."

"We can help," chirped an eager, feminine voice.

The two men turned to the source of the sound, the two, now perturbed-looking, girls sitting on the couch.

"What are you talking about?" the chief asked them. "You can't help us." He then turned back to his conversation with the worker.

Marcie and Daisy looked down at the real culprit, Nova.

"Quit it!" Daisy and Marcie whispered in unison.

"Maybe we can ask Sacramento for some escort from the National Guard, but it'll take time to get that set up, and we're running on a deadline," the chief grumbled.

"But, we're detectives!" the voice chirped, again.

The chief turned back to the nervous, tight-lipped girls, once more. "Are you, now? Have you had any experience catching monsters?" he asked, sarcastically.

Marcie knew Nova's game, by now. She didn't want to leave Crystal Cove, and this Phanplasm problem seemed heaven-sent, so she was forcing Marcie and Daisy's hands to stay and deal with it. Plus, they couldn't very well tell the chief that they had a talking dog with them. Things were troublesome enough. They had to play along.

"Uh, yeah. Where we come from, we do this kind of thing all the time." Marcie answered, hesitantly, which wasn't a complete stretch of the truth.

"Yep," Daisy chuckled, nervously. "24-7. Uh, why don't you give us the low down?"

The chief looked a little uncomfortable talking to strangers about boogie men, but if they could get it done, or, at the very least, make it too busy chasing them, then his men might be able to finish on time, and on budget.

"Okay, about a month ago," he muttered. "We started getting reports from our Machine Division; they're the guys who repair our rigs, that our equipment was breaking down all over the place. Trucks and diggers wouldn't work, generators would go missing, that sort of thing. Then, a few our men started seeing why that was."

"It was some kind of creature," chimed the construction worker. "Big, with flowing robes and an ugly, hooded, ghost face. He used his freaky ghost powers to pick up equipment from a distance and smash it, steer vehicles off the road, or even throw them at us. The other guys have been talking, and I don't know how long they'll stay on before they quit."

The chief looked to the two girls. "Well, you heard him. That's about the long and the short of it. Can you two track this ghost monster thing and shut him down before he wrecks our operation?"

Marcie and Daisy thought on that. They just wanted to go back to home, not become railroaded into a case they weren't prepared for, but they looked into their recent past.

It was hard to deny that, given the number of cases they solved, either together, or apart, they were, in some measure, amateur detectives with a growing, local reputation, and thus, they, publicly, made themselves available to anyone who needed their services, either in their own home dimension, or it seemed, in this one. Help was asked for, help would be given. It was certainly better than twiddling their thumbs in Gatorsburg.

Marcie gave a shrug to indicate that she would resign herself to _try_ and solve this impromptu mystery, and then she looked to Daisy. She would only be speaking for herself in this matter, and she didn't want to drag her friend into the middle of this, if she were neither comfortable nor ready.

"What do you think?" Marcie asked. "Do you want to do this?"

"Why not?" sighed Daisy, knowing that she was as roped into this as Marcie, thanks to Nova. "Guess we spare a few hours."

"Good," nodded the chief. "James, here, will take you to where the creature was last seen. You've got two days to get it done. Good luck, and be careful, out there."

Marcie raised her hand, as if in class. The chief regarded her. "Yes?"

Marcie gave a sinister glance down at Nova, and asked, "Do any of you guys have pet carriers?"

* * *

It was an odd sight that the four came across several blocks further away from downtown and the debris removal management site.

A dump truck was abandoned on the pavement near a ruined boulevard, with three deserted cars stacked, precariously, high in the truck's armored cargo bed.

"Well, we know that he's a _show-off_ with those freaky ghost powers," Daisy admitted to James, as they approached closer.

"Yeah," James agreed. "Unless he's got a crane under those robes, he didn't use one to pull that off."

He accelerated his walking ahead of the girls and dog, saying to them, as he reached the dump truck's cab, "You girls wait here. I want to check around the truck and make sure he's gone."

Marcie and Daisy halted, completely amenable to that course of action, as he went around to the other side of the truck. Nova, with her small legs, caught up to them.

"Okay, Nova, tell us the truth. Is this some Annunaki mind-control?" asked Daisy.

"Hmm?"

"This Phanplasm stuff. Did you make him up, and then plant the idea in everybody's heads, so we'd have to stay here?"

Nova's eyes widened in surprise. "Not at all. Honestly, I have no idea who this creature is; however, I will confess why I brought you both here."

"Please do," Marcie said.

"Because you're being reckless. It became painfully clear, in the stasis chamber, that nothing we could say or do would sway your decision to not wait until Mystery Incorporated reached Arkham, and so, _I_ made a decision. I will not allow you to undo the kindness that we had given them.

"I sent you, here, so you can see the aftermath of what they faced, the weight of lives lost, of innocence, sacrificed. Drink in this bitter brew, Marcie and Daisy, for it may be the only way you will understand your counterparts."

Marcie cocked her head at that. "Counterparts?" she asked her. But, before an answer was given, Daisy called out to James, "Hey, did you find anything?"

The dump truck was silent.

"Think he's taking a break?" Daisy asked, her suspicions, rising. "I hope he's taking a break."

She and the others, suddenly, gasped at what they saw. A limp, senseless body in a hard hat went flying overhead to crash land across the low roof of an abandoned store.

"Let's go back," Marcie suggested, as they, slowly, backed away into a retreat, but still kept their eyes on the dump truck.

All eyes caught sight of jerking movements from the pile of vehicles on the truck, and then saw the uppermost car get lifted away, as if by an invisible catapult, flying high in their direction.

Fearing its impact, they turned with a yelp, and were ready to break into a flat-out run back to the management site, when the wreck crashed to the ground, a few yards in front of them, in an explosion of shattered windshield, road grit, and rust, startling them and stopping their escape, momentarily.

The girls and dog heeled over to head in another direction, when the sound of metal scraping against metal was heard, and then, the second piled car dropped down before them, the very kinetic energy of the crash causing enough force to knock them off their feet.

The last car slamming into the street on their other side had corralled them in a box, with only one opening afforded to them, one that was now being occupied by the approaching specter that glided from around the side of the truck where James was last seen before his unfortunate flight.

The Phanplasm brought his clawed hands close together, and in response, the cars around the girls and Annunaki slid around them, tighter.

"More trespassers on my hunting grounds?" the ghostly predator moaned, vehemently. "The day will not end well for you, for I am the spirit of never-ending hunger! The dead who devours the dead!"

"The Phanplasm!" they gasped in shocked unison.

Marcie gave a quick look above and around the creature. She could see no invisible wires moving objects under his control, no camouflaged magnets sliding the wrecks to and from them. Despite her cultivated skepticism on the supernatural, her brain had little choice but to consider the possibility that this monster might actually have _powers_. Was this something Mystery Incorporated faced, here?

"Nova, do something!" Daisy yelled, but the dog looked as thunderstruck as her.

"I-I...can't," Nova fretted. "I'm not strong enough!"

The Phanplasm let out a hollow, mirthless laugh, as he closed the distance even more, putting himself within physical near-striking distance, or, at least, close enough to pin them until he decided to compress them in the center of his car trap.

"The death I grant will be two-fold. I'll slay your bodies, then gobble your souls!" he chanted, coldly.

The vehicles jerked closer around them. If they tried to escape by rolling across one of the cars' hoods, the Phanplasm was close enough to reach out and, physically, attack, if they stayed where they were, they would be crushed.

In the cacophony of moving junk and victorious, mocking laughter, Marcie, faintly, heard something. A voice.

"Guys! Over here! C'mon!" it said, coming from the general direction of the destroyed street behind the Phanplasm and the dump truck.

The street had been cracked open and partially collapsed, due to the Entity-made earthquakes that tore through the town, with an inclined tongue of asphalt running past rent sewer pipes and exposed earth, leading into the black throat of a deep chasm.

Whoever was calling them, had to be hiding in there, and even if they weren't, Marcie was certain that finding out was better than staying where they were. A distraction was needed.

Marcie reached into her jacket, fingering a Discourager. She wasn't really sure that one could do anything to a ghost, but maybe it could confuse it, if nothing else.

"Guys," she said. "Get ready to hold your breath and follow me."

The other two were surprised that Marcie had made up a plan of action, so soon, but they didn't question it, and waited for her signal.

It wasn't long in coming. Marcie wrenched her hand from the jacket and slammed the capsule on the ground where The Phanplasm's feet would have been, filling the opening it was blocking in an explosion of acrid smoke.

The creature didn't cough or show any sign of physical discomfort, however, he was having trouble navigating, and had to stop stalking his prey to try and dissipate the thickening cloud with his long, spindly arms. This was the break they needed.

"Now!" Marcie yelled.

She tore off towards the opening in the trap, hoping that a sudden breeze wouldn't blow their cover away, with Daisy carrying Nova, hot on her heels.

With the ghost-creature waving blindly for something to grab hold of and attack, the girls and dog stumbled rapidly through the smoke screen, and finally, out into the clear air of the street.

"Hurry!" the voice echoed in the dark underground.

The trio almost hesitated before climbing down the hole, wondering if what was calling them forward was perhaps even more dangerous that the Phanplasm, but they needed to get to cover and hide while the monster was still disoriented.

Making up their minds, they plunged into the dubious safety of the maw's darkness, while far above them; the Phanplasm could be heard giving a chilling, plaintive cry over the loss of a good meal.

* * *

"Just a little further," the voice bade from up ahead, too far for the trio to see anything, but a distant light source.

"Where are we going?" Marcie asked, her anxiety rising every ten feet she and the others were descending on a winding, earthen slope.

She recalled from the local history of her Crystal Cove, that the town was built atop of a deep cave system, carved from the Pacific over the span of thousands, if not millions of years, similar to Gatorsburg's narrower tunnel system,

"I would think away from the Phanplasm," the voice answered in an echo.

"Nova," Daisy said, as they continued to follow their would-be savior. "I thought you said that we were the only Crystal Covians, Covites...people still alive, here. Who's talking to us?"

"I'm not sure, but it can't be a survivor," said the Annunaki. "Everyone was either fed to The Evil Entity, or killed, before the end. All life was extinguished before his defeat."

"Another question. What did you mean when you said that you weren't strong enough to deal with Smiley, up there?"

Nova hung her head. "It...It's punishment for _my_ shameful recklessness."

"Huh?"

"We Annunaki were able to move Mystery Incorporated to your universe, because the time of Nibiru had occurred. The barriers between universes were weak enough for me, Mystery Incorporated, and Professor Ellison to come to your world, but now that Nibiru has passed, it is more difficult to make the breach.

"I had to use almost all of my power to send you here. In retrospect, that was a foolish thing I had done. In stopping you, I may have doomed you to risk, or live, your lives in the center of a ruined town of the dead. I am so sorry."

Daisy fretted on that fact. The thought of them having to start over and eek out a living in a world that wasn't their own, honestly, worried her. She had a life back home, and she was beginning to really see how angry Marcie was with all of this disruption.

She, also, wondered how Mystery Incorporated found the strength to carry on with that same knowledge. Was simply living what was, essentially, a hobby, enough for them?

"So much for practicing what you preach," Marcie grumbled.

"Well, that will keep me up nights," Daisy muttered. "But, on the bright side, you said that you _almost_ used up your power, so you're not tapped out, yet. We'll just have to wait until your batteries are recharged, and then you can take us home."

"I hope so."

In the damp gloom of the path, the slope began to level off beneath their feet into a landing that led the explorers into a wide cavern toothed with stalactites and stalagmites.

"I can only imagine how many meter below the town we-ahh!" Marcie attempted to comment, before her foot stepped on something rounded and hard in the dimness, and she tripped onto the cold ground.

"Are you okay?" Daisy asked, as she and Nova came up to Marcie.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Marcie assured them. "I must've tripped on a pipe, or something."

The light up ahead started to close in on them, until it was close enough for them to see what lay on the ground around them. Black limbs, torsos and helmets littering the ground, and reflecting the light of the group's unseen guide.

"What are they?" Marcie asked. "They look like suits of armor."

"Kreigstaffebots," the guide in the dark answered.

The words sounded familiar to Marcie. They sounded Germanic, and prompted her to recall her high school German language lessons.

"Kreig...staffe... _War time_? These were fighting machines? Did we, I mean, _they_ , build these to help fight the Entity?"

"No. They were built to help Pericles."

Daisy took advantage of the nearby light, and looked around the cave. On the periphery of the scattered robot parts, was a single skeleton, lying on the base of a stalagmite, draped in loose, moldy scraps of clothing.

"I guess they really did a number on that one over there," she muttered.

"Well," the guide said, off-handedly. "I _had_ looked better."

The trio looked confused at that statement, as the ball of light, which they had, earlier, assumed to be from a distant flashlight, began to grow in intensity, but the source of the light, or the appearance of its bearer, still couldn't be seen.

Then, a figure appeared, pale and translucent, carrying a glow that lit a good portion of the cavern. Wide-eyed, the living were witness to an actual, existing ghost, other that the fearful Phanplasm.

That, alone, made the girls freeze in terrified indecision, and rocked their very concepts of reality and mortality to the core, which was impressive, since they both spent time as time and, accidentally, alternate dimensional travelers. But what Marcie saw next, hit her hardest of all.

The affable apparition standing before them sported a wild mane of frizzy hair, spectral spectacles, and the ethereal equivalent of her typical wardrobe choices. Even her ghostly, striped left sock slouched.

As much as she, desperately, wished that her shaken mind would admit to seeing a hallucination, brought on by lack of oxygen in the caves, Marcie Fleach found herself staring face-to-face with the deceased Marcie Fleach.

The ghostly double leaned close to Marcie's shivering face, and quipped, "Are you alright? You look like you've seen...a _ghost_."

Marcie wailed.


	4. 4

_4~_

It was seen and known, to great effect, that no assassin or force of arms could slay him. Death could not claim him, and so time was his to take at his leisure. As that was never an issue to him, Greenman feared no lasting failures that may have befallen him, for he always had time and his undying efforts to rectify them, in due course.

His crusade took months, in the Twenty-first Century, to plan, and centuries, in the past, to execute, but it was this moment in time that was the most fraught with promise. The time Greenman had, quietly, waited for the most. The moment when the history book he brought and secretly used, told him that the known world would never be as vulnerable as will be for the most decisive push he would ever undertake.

The year was 1348, two years before the Black Death, which was already sweeping its deadly hand across Europe, would visit his homeland of England.

Thus, he was spared the expense and effort of asking for an audience with his king, while he brought his countrymen home, while the wolf of death was stalking southern France, when a messenger, arriving in his camp in Brittany, had him recalled at King Edward III's command.

Days later, a page approached him, as he waited outside the throne room within Windsor Castle.

He followed him in, and, looking around at the courtiers and dignitaries flanking either side of the room, Greenman, who had never walked through the castle's halls in his, extremely, long life, could feel the political power that ebbed from here, the national, if not global, weight of consequences born from decisions, great and small, that were uttered in this chamber, the potency of royal blood and issue that this building contained.

"Come," Edward bade him.

Greenman knew enough about protocol to steer his eyes to the floor in the presence of the bearded man who sat high in the center of the room, as he, slowly walked his way.

"You may look upon me," the king allowed him. Greenman lifted his face, and a sense of pride that his sovereign would want to talk to him face-to-face, swelled within him.

"Thank you, Your Highness," Greenman said, suppressing a smile. "This is my first time being summoned here, and I must say that I love what you've done with the place."

Edward gave a slight nod. "Thank you. I decided to have some things done to it. A few add-ons and such. However, that is not what I summoned you for, Master Greenman. Since the days of Alfred the Great, our country had seen and heard of your forebears' fight to return this kingdom, and the world, to the days of the Druids, with a fair amount of martial success."

"That is true, sire."

"Your family's zealotry, however, was never decreed by me, or _my_ forebears," the king said, simply. "Nor has England ever received any spoils from the sacking of foreign cities and the wholesale slaughter of its clergy, soldiers and recalcitrant citizens who supported faiths that you wanted to crush, including our own."

Inwardly, Greenman frowned. The talk started cordial enough. "Am I to be punished, then, my king?"

Edward looked onto his guest with a thoughtfully. Long seconds passed, and Greenman felt every eye in the room on him, before the king, finally, muttered, "I, truthfully, do not know. The only thing that has saved you from spending any time in chains is the fact that I am more delighted in the fall of my enemies to you, than my allies, whom I assuage by telling them that you are just some kind of mad malcontent who is yet to be caught.

"In fact, your most recent campaigns in France have actually been very good to me, and I have found you to be an excellent, if unexpected, vanguard, benefiting me, greatly, in the wars that I have waged. You and your odd followers have left both my foes and friends confounded and afraid, which, politically, is always good thing."

It felt as if the sun had risen in Greenman. He had narrowly escaped censure, or worse. Although he could not die, it would do his cause any good if he were arrested and confined. His people, his faith and his gods needed him far too much. Coupled with the fact that the king had, mistakenly, thought that this Greenman was simply picking up where his warring ancestors had left off, lent him an air of mystery, which didn't hurt, either.

 _'In fact,'_ he thought, deeply. _'I could mold this situation into something that could promote the cause even more.'_

"I had no idea that my family's humble crusade would serve you so well, Your Majesty," he said, smoothly. "As a patriot, I would, of course, give my life unto your service, and for my first act of devotion, I must warn you of a great pestilence that is creeping across the face of Europe."

Amidst quiet murmurs of concern from his court, Edward raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"

"A black plague, sire, killing all it touches. The nobility and clergy of the other countries have no proof against it."

"And how, Master Greenman, did you come by this grave news?"

"I commune with my gods, sire. They told me this," Greenman answered. From what the king told him, earlier, concerning his 'family's' crusade, there was no need to hide his beliefs from him.

"Indeed, Master Greenman, and are we to be spared from this evil?"

"We can be, my king. This disease is spread by ships visiting Italy from the Orient. If you could institute a decree to cut off all trade, temporarily, from Europe, and instigate a program of self-sufficiency in the country, while we wait this illness out, then you shall have saved your people and gained their love for you a thousand-fold. Then, when the sickness has done its harsh work on your enemies, you will be able to sweep all resistance aside in your name, sire."

"And you gods whispered this into your ear, as well?"

"They have, Your Majesty," Greenman said, conveniently, omitting the use of a world history book, obviously.

The king sat back in his tall throne and mused. "A bold plan, Master Greenman, or shall I call you The Undying Pagan Emperor? That is what the people call _you_ behind my back!"

"Sire?" The king's tone did not sit well with Greenman, and once again, the fear of a coming censure raised its horrid head.

"Do not feign ignorance with me, you heretical upstart," Edward grumbled. "My court has long told me of the tales the common rabble have sung about _your_ exploits. The man who cannot die, blessed by the Celtic gods of old to be their champion on Earth. You seemed to be our people's hero, but to me and the church, you are a threat that needs to be stamped out, just as your _followers_ will be, if they do not renounce you.

"However, I am a generous king, and because you have, unwittingly, served this country so well in the past, I offer you this one chance. Turn your back on your followers and your gods of the woods, and I will spare them. Refuse and I will have them cursing your name in the deepest pits of my dungeons. You have one week to obey. Now, leave me."

The censure did come, after all, as Greenman, humbly, backed away, and every eye followed him with disapproval, feigned or true, as he skulked out of the throne room, with a new purpose.

* * *

"Well, now that we've met, and you haven't brought the cave down with all of that screaming," Ghostly Marcie said, hovering, effortlessly. "Who are your friends?"

Daisy, hesitantly, answered, in case the shaken Marcie couldn't do it, herself. "My...name is Daisy Blake, and this is Nova." She pointed to the Cocker Spaniel.

The ghost peered at the two, for a moment, and then said, "Nova, the little dog? Do you know that ghost, Chiles, has been going and on about you for weeks?"

She then regarded Daisy. "As for you, Daisy, is it? I thought you looked a little familiar. I think I saw your double haunting around what's left of Crystal Cove Hospital. She looks like a doctor. Are you one, too?"

A bittersweet feeling came over Daisy, one of humility, surprise, and depression that another version of her had made something of herself of such a magnitude. That even though death had claimed her, she devoted years of her life in the pursuit of something great, something that helped people.

Daisy shook her head. "Nah. I don't really know what I to be, yet, honestly. But my folks would flip out, if they knew that I was some kind of success story, somewhere."

Daisy didn't know what she would do with her life in the future, but in the present, she decided that she could start by keeping the sudden knowledge of Doctor Blake alive in her, to preserve her mark upon this strange world and her own.

Marcie, still sitting on the cold ground, was trying to reconcile this as just another run-in with a strange creature from another timeline, no different than their detour to E-001, the gender-reversed Earth where she met her male counterpart, Maurice, or the alternate Nazi-conquered timeline where they met their Teutonic twins, before finally, finding their proper timeline and Old West Crystal Cove.

Thinking back to the Nazi Earth, she glance down at the defunct war machine nearest her, thought about her having to learn German in school, and wondered if it were all connected on some cosmic level, or just some odd coincidence.

Then, a thought occurred to her. "Ugh! I was so wrong. Kreigstaffe. It means _'warrior,'_ " she corrected herself. "Not 'war time.'"

"You figured it out, huh?" Ghostly Marcie said to her.

"Guess my conversational German's not the best, sometimes," Marcie admitted, not believing that she was having a conversation with a specter. She decided to force herself to roll with it. "Do you speak it?" she asked.

"No," the ghost shrugged, and then quipped. "But, that birdbrain Pericles did. Y'know, for a _parrot_ , he sure loved to _crow_ about those things."

It was then, that Marcie noticed something besides the bon mot, or rather, _didn't_ notice something. There was no echo in the cave, at least whenever Nova, Daisy, or she spoke. Only when her double spoke, did she hear a slight echo.

"Wait a minute," she told the spirit. "Say your name and address." The ghost complied.

Marcie watched her pale, full lips mouthed the words, and reasoned that if she was a ghost, she no longer possessed lungs, a diaphragm, or a larynx, so it was impossible to summon the air needed, or have the organ necessary to make vocalizations. Yet, she and the others could still hear her talk. How was that possible?

Ghostly Marcie could see the wheels turning in her mind, as her living twin tried to fathom why they could hear her.

"Telepathy," she told them.

"Telepathy?" Daisy echoed, guardedly. "You're controlling our _minds_?"

"No. _Telepathy_. Mind-to-mind communication. It's how we speak. It just _looks_ like we're talking. And since we're all having this lovely chat, where did you come from?"

Marcie and Daisy prepared to explain, but then, the ghost raised her hand and pointed at Nova.

"You've been pretty quiet since you've got here," she said to her. "It's okay. I know that you can talk. It's no big deal. I knew a Great Dane that could talk, when he wasn't busy stuffing his face. Weird, huh?"

"You know that I can speak?" Nova asked, guardedly.

"Yeah. I saw you and Daisy talking in the tunnels I led you down."

"Oh," Nova considered. "Alright, then. I am an Annunaki, an enemy of The Evil Entity. I brought Marcie and Daisy into this world to stop them from making a terrible mistake in their own."

Grinning, the ghost maneuvered closer to the dog. "Oooh, sounds juicy! What were they going to do?"

"Bring Mystery Incorporated back here."

The grin faded, quickly, and was replaced by a reproachful glance at the guilty-looking girls.

"Listen, I know about The Evil Entity," the spirit said, quietly. "Professor Pericles and Mr. E would go on and on about him, and the so-called 'Curse of Crystal Cove.' After that monster finished us off, _everybody_ knew about him."

"The Nibiru Massacre," Nova said, soberly.

"Yeah, but that wasn't the end of it. See, because The Evil Entity was so, y'know, _evil_ , when he was destroyed, he left such a dark, spiritual stain over Crystal Cove, that we souls can't move on."

Nova gave a thoughtful look. "Yes. That must have been what I felt when we arrived. The lingering presence of his evil. The dark chord that still echoes."

"That was bad enough, but then, one day, this Phanplasm creature blew into town and began hunting and feeding on the ghostly energy of any citizen he came across, growing more and more powerful. He calls Crystal Cove his hunting ground, and he hasn't left since!"

"We saw his juggling act," said Marcie, trying to wrap her earthly, scientific mind around the, increasingly, validating concept of spiritual warfare. "We were sent by the people trying to clear the town, to get rid of him, somehow."

"Really? Are you like Mystery Incorporated, where you come from?"

"What? No!" Marcie answered, a bit too quickly and defensively. "I mean...from what I've heard about Mystery Inc., they do this all the time. This is just an on again-off again thing for us."

"Got ya. But, if you're gunning for The Phanplasm, then you're going to need our help."

"Who's help?"

" _Ours_. The other citizens. That thing, up there, is snacking us up, left and right. If we don't help you, there won't be anybody left. Crystal Cove may be a ghost town, but I don't want it to be a _ghost_ town, get it?"

"All right," said Daisy. "We'll have to go back to the surface, then, and get our car, plus we have to tell the chief about what happened to James. Know of any place that we can crash, afterwards?"

"I can think of a place," the ghost said, thoughtfully.

"Okay, let's go," Marcie said, then gestured to the spirit. "Wait, what do I call you? I can't just call you Marcie, it'll get confusing."

"Then, how about _Ghost_ Marcie?"

"Or maybe G. M.?"

The apparition shrugged. "Works for me."

* * *

Nova climbed from the mouth of the hole in the street, first, shook the loose gravel and dirt from her honey-colored coat, and took in the open air, sniffing and searching for any trace of the Phanplasm.

As Marcie and Daisy were heard coming out, with G. M. following them, closely, she looked around, and saw only the creature's discarded cars. She couldn't detect him by sight, sound or scent, on the seemingly empty block where she and her companions eluded him.

"I don't think he's here," Nova whispered. "I don't smell him."

"I didn't know ghosts have a scent," Daisy asked.

"We don't," G. M. said. "Unless your nose can sniff out an energy pattern."

"Then, we better keep our eyes open," Marcie muttered, as they left the block and headed back towards the debris removal managerial site.

Along the way, the quartet passed through the neighboring block's commercial area, walking by abandoned boutiques, shops, and stores, their eyes busily scanning the empty facades, alleyways, and dark, storefront windows for a hunter that could strike from anywhere.

"Help!" a panicked voice, suddenly, screeched from above them, cutting through the quiet of the block.

The four froze and searched the sky for the sound, and it was near the second story of a small, nearby store, that they spotted the grim spectacle of a predator taking down his 'kill.'

"I didn't know he could fly!" Daisy gasped, as they watched the Phanplasm hovering in front of the edge of the store's roof, his eager arm, hungrily, outstretched. Pulses of irresistible, concentric energy snagged a frantic ghost, who screamed and thrashed, helplessly, in mid-air over the roof.

A ghost who wore a hard hat.

"James?" Daisy, Marcie and Nova gasped in unison, as the erstwhile construction worker, re-born into the world as a spirit, flailed above them, just as much out of confusion to his new condition, as to his fierce want to survive against the horror that drew him ever closer to his consumption.

Tiny balls of colored light began trailing from a fading James, his form dimming in the daylight, as he was dragged nearer and nearer to the Phanplasm.

"What's happening?" asked Marcie, both horrified and fascinated.

"He's going to feed on him!" Ghostly Marcie exclaimed, swiveling her head around, desperate for a weapon. "We've got to do something!"

A detached hubcap found lying on the street suited the ghost's urgent needs. She rocketed over to it, snatched it up, and flung it from her hand, hard, like a Frisbee, in the Phanplasm's direction.

The disc whizzed between hunter and prey, narrowly, missing and surprising the Phanplasm enough for him to jerk back, momentarily, breaking his concentration and halting his deadly tug-o-war.

"Fly away!" Marcie's dead double screamed at James. "Get out of here!"

Although, he wasn't familiar with his innate ghostly powers, as yet, he knew enough to let instinct take over, and propelled himself along the high breeze, using it, like a jet stream, to carry him farther and farther from the creature's immediate reach. Eventually, either due to distance, or a lucky command of being immaterial, James soon faded from view.

The Phanplasm glowered down at the interlopers, descending upon them, like an angry deity, his pupil-less eyes, coldly, studying the spirit who dared to thwart his hunt.

He pointed a clawed finger at a defiant Ghostly Marcie, as his touched down in the middle of the street.

"You will suffer inside of me for that affront, you meddling mist!" the Phanplasm hissed.

"You've got to catch me, first, you bed sheet!" she fired back, backing, cautiously, away from his vengeful approach.

He stopped his glide, raised his hand, and with a dismissive flick of the wrist, brought Ghostly Marcie down to the ground with a quick and punitive blast of draining energy.

It struck her for only a moment, but the effect was just as instant: fiery, inner pain that made her shriek, the deleterious properties of the pulse, brutally stripping the energetic cohesion from her flickering form, causing her to, painfully, shower small globes of her essence into the air.

The words, "Leave her alone!" flew from Marcie's throat in a frightened rage.

"If you fly, I will overtake you," he warned G. M., ignoring Marcie, as he stalked the apparition. "If you stand your ground, I will devour you, all the same. You should have hid in the ruins, like the others. At least, then, your _true_ end would have been prolonged. Now, nothing can save you, not even these living wretches you ally yourself with."

Withering on the ground, G. M. frowned in thought. Facing the seeming futility of fight or literal flight, his warnings created an indecision took hold of her. Just as he probably wanted, she figured, grimly.

Privately, she carried no allusions that she probably couldn't hold her own against him, as she slowly stood up and hovered, unsteadily, but if her struggles could buy the other time to escape, then it would be for the best.

Hissing, The Phanplasm could still see the defiance burning, weakly, in her eyes, but it didn't matter to him. He raised his hand, again, his appetite sharpening with the anticipation of this feisty capture.

That clawed hand, then shot away from her, and he twisted in confused shock and annoyance at the vexing humans and dog behind him, as thick ice anchored onto the asphalt he was standing on, and creep, swiftly, up the base of his robes and flanks.

With a sound that was part reptilian sibilance, and part aggravated howl, the Phanplasm was pinned to the spot, fighting against the iron hold of the, now, melting ice.

Ignoring the creature's vows of delivering to her a slow and painful death, and an even slower and more painful feeding, Marcie threw more Insta-Ice capsules against the already formed ice block, thickening and weighing it down, significantly, the additional ice climbing further up the body and restraining one of his arms.

"Whoa! I never froze a ghost before, but we've got him!" Marcie crowed, preparing to lead the charge to unmask this strange hunter, if such a thing was even possible. "Okay, let's see who he is!"

The dull, muffled sound of ice being rent from within, stopped Fleach and the others in mid-stride. Cracks, spreading up and down the depths of the ice block, were so large that they could see them from where they stood.

"Uh, guys, I think we better put a pin in that," Daisy fretted.

Even Marcie, shocked at the strength demonstrated to start breaking through the layered ice with so little leverage, had to agree. The Phanplasm was still, technically, restrained, but it was clear that it wouldn't last, forcing them to err on the side of caution and escape.

"Hey, G. M.," Marcie called out to her double. "Time to make like a you, and disappear!"

Ghostly Marcie, astonished that an attack from humans new to the world, managed to stop a force that hunted and fed on ghosts with the impunity of a tiger in a cattle pen, saw past the struggling horror to Daisy waving to her to come with them.

With no more preamble, she flew over to join the others, in time for Marcie to throw a Discourager into the ice.

It cracked apart, flooding the spot with wide, chemical fumes. Although, it didn't deter the still squirming Phanplasm, it proved, yet again, to be an all-around effective smoke screen that seemed to stymie his senses.

By the time the sun had melted enough of the ice for him to, finally, shatter it into wet chunks across the asphalt, his prey took advantage of his incapacitation, and had escape him, once again.


	5. 5

_5~_

The appropriated car chugged and sputtered up the deserted road where the abandoned headquarters of the Destroido Corporation still towered. Once it shuddered to a stop, the three living beings and one ghost disembarked onto the weed-choked landscaping outside the building's facade.

"It's a heck of a thing," Marcie said, marveling at the alternate difference of the place. "We called it Creationex, where we come from."

"Ah, but does your Creationex have its own lair?" G. M. asked.

"Lair?" the girls asked each other in unison.

The trio trekked up to, and maneuvered past the destroyed doors, entering the musty, empty, trash-strewn lobby. Opened attaches, with loosed paperwork, were scattered along the dirty tile floor. Soil from a few spilled potted plants, business-attired skeletons, and the signs of violent death decorated the foyer, to beyond the receptionist's kiosk.

On their way towards the central of three elevators, further ahead, Marcie looked around the place, and muttered to herself, "Talk about a corporate takeover."

A called elevator car soon appeared, prompting Daisy to ask, "This place still have power? How come?"

"Emergency generators," G. M. explained, as they boarded. "They kicked in when the town's grid went down. Good thing, too, where we're going."

When the doors closed, G. M. floated close to Marcie, who was standing by the floor button panel. "Press the floor buttons in this sequence," she instructed her. "13, 18, and 5."

Curious, she did it, and soon, the elevator began to descend.

"When I was alive, I had to come here a few times. The code's alphanumerical. 13, 18, 5. _M_ , _R_ , _E_. Mr. E. If he's still not sulking in a corner, somewhere, I think he can help us out," said Ghostly Marcie. Before long, the car stopped its descent.

The doors opened to reveal a small platform, lit by emergency lighting that led to a squat monorail car. Following the ghost's lead, Marcie and the others got into it.

The interior had no visible means of control, but then, none were needed. As the humans and dog sat down in their seats, their weight depressed buttons within the cushions, signaling to the car's computer that they were ready for travel.

Since the car had only two places to go, the landing, which it, smoothly, left, and its destination, it showed a simple elegance to its design.

The group didn't have time for much small talk, as the tunnel the car flew through was, surprisingly, short. Soon, they reached a second landing, at the other end.

The white, armored doors that greeted them, opened to a spartan and, incredibly, minimalist chamber of white walls and curved, reinforced Plexiglas, a foyer, of sorts, where the living guests stood.

"What's this place?" asked Daisy. "Where are we?"

"You can't see it from the front, but there's a man-made lake behind Destroido. We're in it. Hold on," G. M. said. She then raised her voice to yell out, in singsong, "Oh, Mr. E!"

The sound of an irritated moan gave the illusion of filling the still air of the chamber, but where it only signaled the arrival of someone Ghostly Marcie knew, the others began to feel a cool air settle around them, and a slight feeling of dread, as though they were trespassing inside a guarded tomb.

"G. M., what's going on?" Nova asked, her large eyes scanning every corner of the room.

"He hates when I call him that," the ghost chuckled.

A grumpy, disembodied voice echoed through their minds. "What do you want? I'm busy."

"Doing what, exactly?" G. M. countered. "Moping in front of your console, playing that dumb keytar?"

For a moment, the voice sounded a little hurt by that. "Hey, do I go around critiquing that sad excuse for a lab you've got in your attic, at home, Miss _Hot Dog Water_?"

That made the ghost girl bristle. "Fine, would you please come out here, _Mr. O_ , so my friends can get a look at you. We need your help."

"No one needs my help," the voice said. "I've done enough for poor Crystal Cove. My bitterness and greed saw to that. Now, go!"

The ghostly girl, however, stood her ground. "Or what? You'll haunt me, forever? You should be more worried that I'll haunt _you_!"

"Whatever."

"Look, if you want to stay cooped up in this place, fine. Destroido's your company, but I guess you'll both sit around and collect dust. But, we're going to take the fight to the Phanplasm."

"I saw." the voice said. "And he almost got you, however, your friends acquitted themselves well enough, although I saw that we have another lost soul in this town, now, thanks to that monster. I'm sorry about that."

"Well, don't be sorry," G. M. pressed him. "Just help us, because if you don't, then how long will it be before he finds out about Angel?"

Everyone could almost _feel_ an up tick of emotion come from the mysterious voice, when he asked, "What are you saying?"

"You're not the only one who sees things in this town. I know that she haunts the beach by the water where she died. I know that's where you go to see her, every evening. But, this guy is a hunter. If I know where she is, how long will it be before _he_ does? How long before he drains her until she's nothing but a memory?"

" _Enough!_ "boomed the voice, its telepathic intensity making the living in the room jump and mistake it for sheer volume.

Marcie gave a thought as to how to proceed. It was obvious that their host didn't want to be disturbed, but she couldn't help thinking of what a voice like that sounded to her.

He sounded like a grumpy man who didn't want to be bothered indulging someone else's immediate wants. Like a preoccupied...father. With a smirk, Marcie knew that her years of cajoling her father to get what she wanted, sometimes, could well and truly come into play, here.

"Look, don't worry about it," Marcie said, seemingly to G. M.. "If he can't do it, why push him? His company is, obviously, behind the times, and doesn't have the kind of equipment we'd need anyway. It's too outdated and obsolete." She glanced, knowingly, at Daisy, to pick up the performance on her end.

"Yeah, sorry, Mr. E, I mean, uh, Mister Owens, sir," Daisy chimed in. "I'm sure you have tons of memories about important stuff you used to do, and probably, want to go back to." Daisy glanced over to Marcie's double.

"Yeah, I mean it's not as if you _weren't_ living in Pericles' shadow," said Ghostly Marcie, now, understanding her role in the offensive. "Anyway, we're going, now. Tell Angel that I said 'Hi.'"

"Wait a minute!" the grouchy voice called out, and then began to soften. "I...may have been a bit hasty in my decision, just now. Perhaps, I might still have access to my resources, after all. Marcie-"

"Yes?" both Marcies, reflexively, answered.

"Uh, bring your guests inside, and we'll talk. Just follow the sound of my music. I'll be at my monitoring station over the shark tank."

"You got it." G. M. thought back, as another door slid aside for them. She then shook her head to the trio beside her as they proceeded. "Why didn't I think of that? Good old reverse psychology."

"Heh," said Daisy, smugly. "You should see what happens when you make fun of boys and their toys."

"Wait," Marcie said, remembering what the voice said. "Did he say shark tank?"

* * *

The melancholy melody of synthesizer music proved to be as haunting as its maker, and led them though the halls of the hidden complex, until they could see a shimmering light dancing on the walls at the end of a corridor. The music was, also, louder in that direction, so they went there.

Once they emerged from the trapezoidal mouth of the hallway, they could see the chamber they entered.

It was immense, looking, for all the world, like a tranquil, secluded, yet gloomy-looking aquarium. Above, the structure was a reinforced dome, windowed with strong, pressure-resistant glass to give impressive views of the faux lake's transplanted aquatic flora and fauna.

Below, stretched a vast, lit pool, with bridges, sprouting like spokes and spanning from any of the two circular levels of entry into the room, leading to the wide, cork-screwing dais that sat in its center.

Upon the dais, stood two artistically-curving banks of monitor of various sizes and functions, with a single chair between them.

Apart from the pool, the monitor banks were the strongest source of light in the place, their combined screens creating a shaft of illumination that reached up, unto fading, to the ceiling dome overhead. The music was much clearer there, and echoed, beautifully, against the curving walls.

"I forgot to ask. Who's Angel?" Daisy asked the ghost, feeling that they were close enough to their host to get out a personal question before the meeting.

"Angel Dynamite, real name: Cassidy Williams, was Crystal Cove's DJ, a member of the first Mystery Inc., and Mr. O's girlfriend. From what I heard around the lair's water cooler, when I was alive, she was killed when she was investigating some underwater base. That was around the same time that we all started seeing those big robots Pericles hung around."

"Why did he bring the robots here?" asked Marcie.

"Mass production for mass destruction. They were using them as their own private army to help find the Planispheric Disc and free The Evil Entity. Come on," Ghostly Marcie bade the others, floating down a flight of stairs and across a nearby bridge that sat low over the water and connected to a wider platform of similar height.

Marcie, Daisy and Nova followed the spirit, until Nova stopped the procession halfway across the span, and listened. The soft sound of rippling water caused her stand in alert and peer over the side of the bridge, which, she just noticed, distressingly, was without railings.

"What's wrong?" Marcie asked.

"I think I heard something in the water," Nova whispered.

"This must be that shark tank, Mr. O was talking about," Daisy said.

Marcie sighed, pensively. "I hope they fed that thing before we showed up."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that, you guys," Ghostly Marcie said, and then floated further ahead.

"I wonder what she meant by-" Nova was saying, before she and the girls had the fright of her lives.

Off to the side of the low bridge, the water exploded from the action of a massive force, as the bone white nose and underbelly of a Great White Shark breached the previously calm waters of the pool, drenching the three of them.

With a chorus of screams, the soaked trio ran full-tilt towards the platform, and then, blindly, through a laughing G. M..

They kept running up the only avenue that promised them any safety, the cork-screwing path up the dais, towards the top, and didn't stop until they reached the curvilinear monitor banks, where they stopped to catch their breath, and waited for their hearts to slow to normal.

Ghostly Marcie floated up to meet them, still chuckling.

"What are you laughing about?" Marcie wheezed at her. "There's a shark, down there!"

"That was a horrible thing to do!" Nova chided.

"Yeah!" Daisy chimed in, frantically. "What are you doing? Making sure he got us, so you could have some company 'til Doomsday?"

"Do you, really, think I would do that to my friends?" the grinning ghost asked. "Guppy wouldn't hurt a fly, especially these days. Look."

G. M. gestured out towards the pool and the apparition of a Great White swam, sinuously, up into the air, and around the dais, as if waiting for prey to leave its supposed protection.

"With no one around to feed him, he didn't have long to live, poor thing," she said, watching the shark, silently, serpentine above them.

She then walked over to the near-empty chair between the banks. Near-empty, because a keytar was floating on its side and its keys were being moving up and down to produce its music.

"I see that our guests have met Guppy," the gruff voice said from the chair.

"Yeah, but I think they'd be happier to see _you_ , now, Mr. O."

"Very well."

The space in the chair began to fill with the ample girth of a bearded, pale white, heavy-set ghost of a man in a voluminous coat monogrammed with a capital E, over a striped shirt. He waved the trio over, and they cautiously approached him.

"Come closer," he bade them. "Like my pet shark, now, I won't bite. I am Ricky Owens, owner-"

"Former," Ghostly Marcie interjected.

"Of Destroido Corporation," Owens continued his introduction, glancing at the other ghost. "One of the founding members of the original Mystery Incorporated."

"Formerly."

"Known to some as Mr. E-" he growled.

"Once."

"And am about to see if ghost sharks can eat little ghost girls!" he yelled at the smirking spirit. "Anyway, I know about the clean-up crews asking for your services in capturing or running off the Phanplasm, before one of their workers met his end."

The three visitors stood before the corpulent spirit. Going by what Ghostly Marcie said about him, when he was just a voice, Marcie thought of Owens as just some testy, old grump. Since their host was lit from all around by the monitor screens, they all couldn't help but see his features, particularly, his face.

Looking past the dark circles and into the depths of those brooding eyes, they saw a spirit, within this spirit, weighed down by inner pain, a deep, pitiable sadness caused by the regrets of hard, personal choices and the sins that begat bad decisions in his life, self-inflicted wounds that even his own death couldn't assuage.

Marcie asked, "How do you know all of that?"

Owens gave a broad sweeping gesture to the monitors around him. "Before my death, I had this whole town wired with hidden, solar-powered cameras to follow all of my agents and see what happened before my enemies did, so I can tailor my plans, accordingly."

"Wow! Don't take it personally, but where we come from, I've seen you in commercials, and you're in a _lot_ better shape," Marcie told him. "So, where's your white cat and monocle?"

Owens, smoothly, countered her jibe. "I think _you'll_ agree that the shark sent a more appropriate message. Now, what I don't know, at present, is who you are and where you come from."

"Long story short," Daisy sighed. "Alternate universe versions of Marcie and me, brought here because of a powerful cosmic being that possessed the body of a little dog."

"Hmm, I see," Owens said, not completely surprised by the revelation, considering what happened to him and the town. "Now, you came to me for help. What is it that you propose?"

"We need to figure out a way to either capture or destroy the Phanplasm. That's pretty much it," Daisy said.

"G. M. told us that when she was one of your agents, she saw laboratories and machine shops in your lair," Marcie explained.

"G. M.?"

"Ghostly Marcie," the ghost girl shrugged.

"Anyway," Marcie continued. "If that's true, then that's great news. She and I are scientists, not exorcists. We could come up with ideas, if we had something to work with. So, we were wondering if you could give us access to your resources."

Owens sat back and stroked his beard, thoughtfully. "Hmm, I have to say that I never considered a direct attack on the creature, before. I suppose, being a ghost, I just wanted to hide away, forever, as penance for my crimes. But, maybe you kids are a sign that I should stop feeling sorry for myself."

He regarded the other ghost. "You're right, Marci-uh, I mean, G. M.. My Angel, my Cassidy, _is_ in danger, out there. If I have the wherewithal to help stop this monster and I did nothing about it, then I would be doubly guilty of causing harm to innocent people, like Cassidy. It's a bold plan...and I'll help you achieve it."

"Thank you, sir," Marcie sighed in relief. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we can end his hunt."

* * *

"I'm more at home in a chemistry lab, than an engineering one," Marcie said, looking around the interior of one of the still equipped laboratories that resided in one of the lair's lower floors. Then, she continued to scribble physics equations concerning energy transference on a wide whiteboard. "But, this isn't a bad set-up, all things considered."

"Professor Pericles would spend hours in all of the labs, either working on some sort of future mind-control agent, killer genetic mutations, or modifications to those Kreigstaffebots of his," G. M. said, floating in one spot.

"Well, since we don't have a parapsychologist on hand, I'll just have to ask you, as an expert on the metaphysical, do ghosts, generally, drain energy from other ghosts?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Besides, just because I'm dead, doesn't mean I'm an expert on it. I used to be alive, but I wasn't an expert on biology."

Marcie shrugged. "Good point."

"I do know that we don't eat. We don't need to, so whatever the reason for the Phanplasm to consume spiritual energy, it might be unique only to him, like a vampire, but instead of feeding on blood to extract the life force he needs, he may feed on it, directly, by attacking other spirits."

"So, how are we going to stop him?" Daisy asked. "Stake him in the heart?"

"Hardly," Marcie said. "We're going to use good, old fashioned science, in this case, physics. Energy is energy, whether ghostly or not. If we can come up with a system to weaken and/or capture his energy pattern, like electricity in a battery, we could, theoretically, nab him."

G. M. nodded. "That sounds plausible. We'll work on a design and, hopefully, we'll have a feasible proof of concept to test."

"No arguments, there, however, when we reach the testing phase, we're going to have to find suitable ghost guinea pigs."

"Why did you look at me when you said that?" G. M. asked, suspiciously.

"Huh? Oh, no reason."

"Well, don't worry about the test subjects," G. M. said, defensively. "I'm sure I can _scare_ up a ghost or two. The scientists, who once worked here, are still haunting the place, so we can always ask them to help out. Now, let's start with metallurgy. What kinds of metals are conductive?"

"Selenium sounds good." Marcie mused.

Just then, the spirit of Ed Machine, the ex-CEO of Destroido walked, stiffly, into the lab, his countenance as stoic as it had ever been in life.

"Are you the people working on ways to get rid of the Phanplasm?" he asked.

"Yes," Nova answered for the others. Machine didn't react to the sight of a talking Cocker Spaniel sitting on a stool. After the events that led up to his violent demise at the hands, or wings, of Professor Pericles, things like that, rarely, surprised him, anymore.

Ghostly Marcie took the time, however, to give the taciturn ghost a friendly wave as he approached. "Hey there, Mr. Machine. How are you doing?"

"Existing, Miss Fleach," Ed said to her, flatly. He then reached into his business suit jacket and produced an envelope sealed in wax, stamped with a monogrammed E.

"Mr. E heard that you were having difficulty coming up with solutions to your problem, and has sent you this to help." He placed the envelope on the work table they were sitting around.

"Admit it, Mr. Machine," G. M. said to the other spirit. "Delivering those letters from your boss is a lot easier, now that you're a ghost, huh?"

Machine rolled his eyes, grunted once, and then said nothing.

Focusing, along with everyone else, on the letter, Marcie said to her double, "I guess he's got the whole lair wired, if he can hear us, and I thought you said that he didn't like being called Mr. E, anymore."

Ghostly Marcie turned her head to address that fact to Machine, but he was already gone.

"Check it out," Daisy said, as she opened the missive. "Sometimes, a mystery can fog the issue. When that happens, the answer is like an open window, clearing things up, with me on one side and you on the other. When you see me, what will I do?"

Ghostly Marcie had to chuckle at that, which made her companions all the more confused.

"So, he's, finally, getting back into the swing of things," she said to herself.

"What are you talking about, G. M.?" Daisy asked, perplexed. "We don't need riddles, we need to figure out what to do."

"Believe it or not, he's helping," G. M. explained. "When Mystery Incorporated and I were working for him, he would send us these cryptic riddles and letters to help us along the way. Speaking of which, what ever happen to the gang?"

Nova regarded the spirit and said, "They are living well in the other universe my people brought them to. They are happy doing what they loved when they were here."

Ghostly Marcie nodded. "Solving mysteries, huh? Well, I'm glad I was able to do what I could to help them, especially Velma."

"Can you go to our universe to see Velma?" Marcie asked G. M., out of the blue.

"Uh, I don't think so."

Marcie looked at her as though she were delusional, or worse, deranged. "Then, how, _how_ can you, of all people, be happy that you'll never see your Velma, again?"

The easy-going demeanor of the ghost began to fade, as she faced Marcie. "Hey, Velma was my girl, and I'd do anything to help her. I'd take a bullet for her. Come to think of it, I took several, and I'd do it, again, if I had to. I'm not speaking for you, but I think you, probably, would, too."

"You know I would!" Marcie exclaimed, defensively. "It's just that...I want to _go_ _on_ seeing Velma, _my_ Velma. I can't face not being able to, not again. That's why I wanted your Mystery Incorporated to come back, here. So, she could be let out. It's bad enough that your Velma _lied_ to me!"

Ghostly Marcie was so shocked that anyone, even an alternate version of her, would slander her friend's good name, she had to stop herself from forcing Marcie to retract the statement. "What? When? Not _my_ V!"

Marcie stood her ground. "Yes, _your_ V. Ask Nova. She'll tell you. She pretended to be my Velma, and then disappeared with her buddies, right after talking to me. I flew through time and space to bring my friend back, and it's not fair that I still have to wait for her to come back to me."

"If my V said what she said, then I'm sure she had a good reason, but, why would she _want_ to come back, Marcie? What's waiting for her, here, except...?" G. M. waved her hands at the world as it was, now. "This?"

"But, don't you miss her, G. M.? Don't you want to see her again?" Marcie pressed.

"Everyday!" Ghostly Marcie answered her. "But, if she's happy and alive where she is, then _I'm_ happy, too."

Marcie didn't even notice that she was gritting her teeth in frustration. Looking at Ghostly Marcie was, in a way, looking at herself saying bittersweet things she would never want to hear, or say.

It was like seeing a part of her letting Velma go. It made her feel ill and frightened to the bone. But what was it? Fear of losing her, or fear of losing an obsession. It made her fall into the rabbit hole of her confused heart, and face questions she would rather not tackle.

"Ugh! You don't understand! _None_ of you do!" She yelled in a broken voice, before leaving the laboratory in a teary huff.

Nova glanced at Daisy, and hung her head in sympathy and concern. "I should have thought of a better way than bringing Marcie and you, here, Daisy. I'm causing more harm than good."

Ghostly Marcie turned to the Annunaki. "Let me talk to my living half. Maybe, I can break through that Fleach stubbornness of ours."

* * *

It wasn't until later that Ghostly Marcie, finally, found a sulking Marcie sitting on a bench inside the facility's empty commissary. She, quietly, floated over to sit across from her.

"What do you want, Phantasma?" Marcie sniped, when she noticed the ghost from the corner of her red eyes.

"Zing! Come on, admit it, Marcie. You're just like I was. When you don't get your way with something, you get pig-headed in the pursuit of it. It's that old Fleach stubborn streak.

Marcie looked away, slightly. "What are you talking about?"

"You doing all of this for V, because you're lonely, you miss her...I understand."

"I do, but, I'm not lonely, anymore. I have friends, now."

"That may be true, but, when it comes to _best_ friends, V was your first, and you _never_ forget your first," GM said, with a hint of double entendre. "Face it, with Velma, it's not just simple love with you, it's almost survival."

Marcie thought on that. It was strange to talk to someone who got her so well, strange and refreshing. "I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing, but...when she's not around, I _do_ feel like those animals in the caves, just trying to get by with less oxygen. Maybe she should be in the Periodic Table of Elements."

"Well, we do call her "V" a lot, don't we? That should be her symbol. Hang on, I want to do something."

G. M. reached across the table and, gently, touched Marcie's forehead. Instantly, a slideshow flashed in her mind, a presentation of every thought, action, and heady emotion that the apparition experienced in her young life, concerning Velma, including their early rivalry, and her later redemption.

There were moments that paralleled Marcie's own relationship, but there were just as many that were unique to the ghost's, and although, she had experienced a sample of the differing versions of herself, somehow this version felt more connected to her than any of the others.

Eventually, the images faded when the agony of her bloody death faded, causing a new stream of tears to flow gradually down her cheeks, in grief.

"I'm so sorry about what happened to you, but why did you show me all of that?" Marcie asked, wiping at her wet face.

"Because I wanted you to know why my Velma is so special to me? Why I had such a change of heart before the end. Believe it or not, I was awkward and unpopular. Heck, when I ran into Velma at the amusement park, the first thing we argued about was dating.

"But, after a while, Velma took me into her group, and I couldn't believe that her concern for my feelings of being an outcast were so genuine. She really wanted to be my friend.

"That was my "Eureka" moment, the moment I realized why I always saw her as a rival. It wasn't because she was smarter than me, per se. But, because she had _friends_ , and I didn't. That's what I was really jealous of."

"So, you hid your jealousy behind competition?" Marcie reasoned.

"Yes. Don't get me wrong, though. I loved to compete and crush anyone who thought they had got a _ghost_ of a chance against me, scientifically. But, at the end of the day, what does it matter, if you don't have anyone to talk to about the victories, or cry to about the failures? V reached out to me, and I'm not ashamed to say that she was the best thing in my life. But, now, that's threatened."

"Why? Because of the Phanplasm?" asked Marcie.

"No. Remember when I told you that we couldn't move on because of what happened after The Evil Entity died?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I, also, think that I, personally, won't be able to move on because of the evil that _you're_ doing."

Marcie was startled by that. Evil was the last thing she would have ever thought herself as being. "What?"

"Hear me out. You're being evil, because you're being selfish. You're were trying to bring my Velma back, not caring that you'd be holding her back from what she wants, what I died trying to help give her. You have to promise me, if, or when, you return to your universe, you have to leave my Velma and the others alone, so they can be free to live their lives."

Marcie let those words sink into her brain as deeply as her friend's memories did, and yet she tried to muster a feeble defense for her transgressions.

"But, I didn't do it to hurt anyone, G. M.. I...I just..."

Ghostly Marcie held up a hand to silence her. "I looked into your mind, _too_ , Marcie. I saw what you were willing to do for your V, just as you saw what I was willing to do for mine. I don't think that you're obsessed with her. I just think that, like me, you have so much love for her, that you could bust."

Marcie hung her head in silent agreement.

"We both know that their happiness means so much to us," Ghostly Marcie said. "I gave my life to help V see her mission through, and you risked your life to help yours. Honor my sacrifice, Marcie, as I honor hers, and let her go."

The face-to-face acknowledgement of the pain that she actually caused the courageous spirit made Marcie feel ashamed. She, bitterly, thought back on her narrow-minded words and deeds, never considering anyone else's feelings on the matter, but hers. It may not have been obsession, but the selfishness was hers, and she had to own up to it.

"You're right, G. M.. I guess I, literally, had to take a good, hard look at myself to get my head straighten out," she sighed. "She's been gone for months, you know? Do you know how much school work she's missed?"

G. M. shrugged and chuckled. "You'll help her catch up. Don't worry about it. Now, I can't say how long you'd have to wait for her...but, I do know that you love her. Let's face it. To us Marcies, I guess that'll never change."

"You've got a point, there," Marcie sighed, with a resigned smile. "I guess we're just geeky moths, and she'll always be our nerdy, little flame."

G. M. smiled, again. "True enough, Marcie Fleach. True enough. Now, let's get back to work. We've got a ghost town to save."


	6. 6

_6~_

Daisy maneuvered their used car around another fissure in the middle of the street, as she navigated through a deeper section of the ruined downtown.

Despite the beauty of Crystal Cove's sunset, the gradually growing shadows that stretched from the ruins made the town feel more unwelcome, and seemed to herald a not-to-farfetched notion that the Phanplasm would do even better hunting at night.

"Is it me?" Daisy muttered. "Or are the streets even worse on this side of town?"

"Stay the course," Ghostly Marcie said to her, with confidence, from the back seat. "You can make it."

"I just hope the information that scientist gave you was solid," Marcie fretted.

"Of course, it wasn't _solid_. She's a ghost," the spirit quipped. "But, she's okay. She said that she used to work for Quest Research Labs in town, and when the staff was still breathing, they were working on something along the lines of Tesla, a portable energy transmitter. Another device they were working on did the opposite effect; it could absorb energy from the ambient electromagnetic spectrum. They called it EAT-Energy Absorption Technology. Makes sense."

"So, where would this stuff be?" Daisy asked.

"She said that prototypes would, probably, be stored in a vault in the engineering lab," the ghost said. "And the schematics would be stored in the lab's mainframe."

"We've got options. Good," Marcie nodded at their good fortune. "The sooner we get them and put the Phanplasm down, the better. We don't need to spend any more time, here, than we have to."

Ghostly Marcie gave a smirk. "Oh, come on, Marcie. You're not giving this place a chance. Just wait until the sun goes down. Then, this town'll be like a whole other place."

"I'm just afraid of ending up in a _hole_." Daisy complained, as she slowed down to avoid a deep pothole. "It's bad enough trying to watch out for these streets during the day. At night, I don't know if I'll be able to see them in time."

"Don't worry. You're almost there," the ghost said to her. "There it is."

Daisy and Marcie immediately recognized the building as they approached it. In their world, it had been repurposed into the Crystal Cove branch of Sundial, after Benton Quest's fall from scientific grace.

After parking the car in the street in front of the building, Daisy and the others got out and examined the lab's façade's damaged features more closely, to get a sense of what to expect when they searched among its floors.

The building was mainly intact, its sheer size spared it from being further injured during the town's local tremors and invasion. Halfway up the length of the lab's central administrative tower, they could see windows gutted to the sky, with the windows of the floors, immediately, above, slightly melted. The forward edges of the sides of the tower's wall, at that point, were scorched, the testament of a fire that had raged and long since went out.

A flight of stairs led from the street up to the main entrance, however, it was the incongruous sight of tire tracks running up its length, which caught the group's combined attention.

When they reached the top of the stairs, they saw that the glass of the main doors were shattered and their frames, streaked with blue paint within the rough, metal scars, were violently bowed inward, the flanking metal detectors, demolished.

"Well, that explains the tire tracks," Marcie mused. "Whoever drove up here, either lost control and smashed the doors in by accident-"

"Or someone wanted to get in, bad," Daisy finished.

Stepping through the twisted main entrance, and being careful to avoid the jagged teeth of remaining glass still attached to the steel frames, the group crept into the vast lobby, that was growing darker from the dying light of the day.

Daisy cast her eyes on the dim corners of the foyer. The walls around them were stained black with soot from old fire damage. Above them, the ceiling was breached, exposing the warped and torn network of pipes that served the building's sprinkler system.

The water that had long put out the flames, was still leaking from the torn conduits, creating a Sistine Chapel-like spread of mold across the ceiling, and feeding a pool of water that extended a quarter of the length of the room. Broken glass from the front doors sparkled in the pool's depths, but there was no evidence that there was a car, here.

"There's no car, here." Daisy said. "I guess the doors stopped it."

Ghostly Marcie cocked her head for a moment. "Do you hear something?"

"Yeah," said Marcie, turning on her penlight, and sweeping its beam across the width of the lobby.

Off to one shadowy side of the lobby, stood a small, portable generator, quietly, putting. Ghostly Marcie flew over to examine it further, and saw two cantaloupe-sized, spherical machines resting on the floor beside it, being fed power from cords that connected the generator to them.

Each sphere was actually composed of two silvery, metal hemispheres joined in the center by an equatorial space where a rotor's propeller was extended. It was clearly designed for powered flight and was marked with a tiny stenciling that read, _Saturn I Security Drone_.

"Hey, guys, look at this," she called out to them.

When they gathered around her to look at the strange machines, she said to them, "They look like high-tech security robots. Somebody's taking care of them, but who?"

"Probably the same person who's been stealing generators," Marcie said, pointing her lit penlight at the top of the generator. "Look."

Ghostly Marcie peered down, saw the logo stenciled on the putting machine, and read, "Clean Sweep Debris Removal."

"Those must be the generators that the Chief said were stolen by the Phanplasm," Daisy said. "What would a ghost monster need with generators?"

"Charging security drones, apparently," said Marcie. "Looks like our Phanplasm may be less than meets the eye, and he's probably here in the building, so let's keep an eye out for him while we get what we came for."

"We better find a map," Daisy suggested. "This place is big."

They moved further through the lobby, passing ragged-clothed, animal-gnawed skeletons on the floor, until Marcie saw what looked to be a large, soot-covered, picture frame hanging on a section of the blackened wall, ahead.

Wiping the glass of the frame clean with her hand, she revealed a floor directory and map, while the others joined her.

While they studied the list of floors and numerous facilities, the map below the directory, showed the lobby, a bank of elevators, up ahead, that served the administration tower, and an arched corridor on either side of the lobby's security sectioned rear, that led to elevators that served the two laboratory wings that flanked the tower on the ground level.

"Chemical, Bio-Chemical, Computer Sciences...ah! Engineering," Marcie said, pointing to the outermost of the two tandem laboratory sectors in a given wing. "That must be where the devices are."

Crossing the lobby and entering the side corridor that led into the first floor of the engineering labs, the group tried to call down the elevators that served the sector, and found them unresponsive.

"I guess back-up power isn't working," Marcie muttered. "That explains the portable generator, back there."

"Let's take the stairs," the ghost offered, standing by a door near the elevators, which opened to an emergency staircase that ascended the floors of the sector.

As Ghostly Marcie floated ahead with an inner light to lead the way, they reached the next floor's landing, opened its door, and walked into its dark level.

From down the halls and inside the laboratories that flanked them, the corners of the girls' glancing eyes could catch silent, tell-tale glimpses of ghostly staff members floating in and out of the edges of their vision, sometimes, pantomiming or even performing the tasks they did in life, or just, forlornly, standing in the dark corners of rooms or the hallway.

Ghostly Marcie went up to one of the forlorn, and asked him, "Excuse me. But could you tell us where you would keep engineering prototypes, or their schematics?"

The ghost regarded her, quietly, and then pointed a finger towards the ceiling.

"Thanks," she said, and then waked back to her companions.

"Upstairs," Ghostly Marcie relayed, and then they turned and headed back the way they came, down the hall towards the staircase.

"Are we okay?" Marcie asked her ghostly double, nervously, as they walked by a floating researcher. "We're not…intruding, are we?"

"No, not really," the spirit explained. "Sometimes, this is just how ghosts cope with their condition. Some just sit and stare, and others just want to get back to doing what they did in life, probably to forget what happened to them."

"Is that what you did?" Daisy asked her. "Is that how you coped?"

Ghostly Marcie gave a wan smile. "I don't know. I just woke up one day in the cave where I died, and just wandered around. Maybe I just needed to know if the last thing I did in my life was done. Nova said that the old gang was safe, so maybe that was it. Nothing left to do, now, except help you stop the Phanplasm, so the rest of the town and I can move on."

"If it's upstairs," Marcie suggested, "Let's go to the top and work our way down, so we don't miss anything."

"Works for me," Daisy agreed.

Slowly huffing and puffing all the way to the uppermost floor, they, eventually, entered the reception area of an, eerily, quiet office level, dimly, lit by the ambient light of the retreating sun through its windows.

Taking a rest, here, their eyes adjusted enough in the gloom to notice the smashed remnants of a pair of glass security doors that provided entrance into the floor's outer office and work area.

The ghost floated into the office, and waited for the others by the empty receptionist's desk. The two living girls stepped through the shattered doorway to join her, soon after.

The boxy sight of another portable generator, sitting the space of the desk, nearby, caught their attention.

"Another one," Daisy remarked. "No drones, though."

"Good," Marcie nodded. "Let's split up and find that vault."

Immediately, Daisy bore for the rooms to the right, with Ghostly Marcie following her to provide lighting, and Marcie, with her penlight, took the unassuming rooms to the left.

All the while, silent guardians were waiting for them.

* * *

Daisy and Ghostly Marcie crept into the midst of the standardized layout of rooms, and discovered, while searching, that they housed and supported the floor's computer department.

Each one they entered was given a cursory glance. The tiny offices looked spartan and efficient, and none looked as if they would store anything valuable, although some were still manned by a corpse or two, which made Daisy jump, badly, when found.

The supervisor's office, the largest room in this operations pool, was the last to be opened and searched, before rendezvousing with Marcie.

The duo walked in, and the door, easily, closed behind them with a soft click. Off to one side of the wide room, Daisy thought she saw a large structure extended from it, possibly another door, but when the glowing ghost moved near it, it turned out to be a bookcase.

"Rats," Daisy swore.

In the room, behind them, a floating, red eyeball moved, slowly, to observe them, its propeller wash, softly, rustling some papers on a nearby table.

* * *

Marcie opened the door, and gave a peek into what looked to be another conference room, seeing the same kind of wide table and chair arrangement that those rooms were typically furnished with.

Instead of studying the room from the threshold, however, casual curiosity goaded her to step further in. The door, then, quietly, closed behind her, and cut off from the others.

* * *

This time, it was Daisy who pricked her ears to a sound. "Do you hear that?"

Ghostly Marcie turned her head to follow the sound, when she noticed it, and came face to face with an operational security drone, hovering with its central rotor, its one crimson eye not looking at her, but at Daisy, beside her.

"Uh, I think I know what it is," the ghost said, nervously.

"What?"

From the drone's southern hemisphere, a tiny, red light winked on, next to a small, pronged protuberance, shaped like an electrical plug. The plug-like object shot from the hemisphere, where it missed Daisy, and embedded its wired taser dart into a portion of wall that she was standing next to.

The sound of the impact, made Daisy spin around to see the dart's wires hang impotent and discharged from the drone.

"Okay, that's unexpected."

The drone pulled the dart free from the wall, leaving two small burn marks were they penetrated.

Daisy grabbed a folder from off the office's desk and brandished it. The drone's response was to try and fire his dart through the folder and strike her, anyway, but the paperwork inside proved to be just thick enough to stop the taser, although its voltage, promptly, smoldered the paper and, quickly, set it ablaze.

* * *

Marcie walked around the periphery of the wide table, sweeping the light beam of her penlight along the dark walls, revealing portraits, inspirational posters...and a red-eyed drone hovering in front of the door she came through.

"Uh-oh," she muttered, before she noticed a tiny red bulb on its lower hemisphere blink on.

Not knowing the drone's intentions, Marcie backed away, but then, stumbled against a chair and almost fell over, just as a pronged taser dart shot from its cubby-hole and stabbed into the high back rest of that chair.

As she recovered from her misstep, she could see two thin wires, attached to the dart, pull taught as the drone tried to reel the dart back, and met resistance from the padding of the chair.

Realizing that it was her cue to leave, Marcie went around the still struggling machine and reached the door. Then, her peripheral vision caught the second one.

Another drone hiding in the shadows of the room's ceiling, fired its taser down upon her. It missed, deflecting off the door knob she was holding, and sending a numbing shock into her hand that made her jump back in defensive pain.

The second drone descended.

* * *

The drone circled around Daisy, looking for a clear shot to stun her with its taser, while she drove it away with the flaming folder, which, she noticed with distress, was being consumed with every wave, making the growing fire creep closer to her hands.

Desperate to help and caught up in the moment, Ghostly Marcie saw a stapler on the desk, scooped it up, and threw it against the rounded hull of the drone, which ricocheted off it hard enough for the drone's computer brain to decide that the thrower of that was a greater threat, and disregarded Daisy, momentarily.

That gave Daisy time to look for, and find a metal wastepaper basket to discard the folder.

"Rats," she swore, again, once she realized, upon, hastily, dumping the fiery, improvised weapon into the basket, that she didn't remove the other paper that was already in it. The trash fed the fire, nicely.

The drone turned in place and scanned the section of the room that it thought the attack came from, but saw nothing.

The spirit, expecting quick retaliation, saw how flustered and cautious the machine was behaving, and then called out to Daisy, "I don't think Humpty-Dumpty can't see me! I'll distract it!"

Daisy was about to run to the door, when she looked down at the flaming wastepaper basket, and hesitated.

"Not yet," she said. "I've got to put this fire out!"

"What?" Ghostly Marcie asked, incredulously, holding the drone's attention by waving a paperweight, which it _could_ see.

"I know the whole town is trashed, but I don't want it to burn down because of me," Daisy explained. "It could spread to other towns, and I do _not_ need that kind of guilt in my life!"

"Fire is rapid oxidation," the ghost told her, while distracting the drone by tapping its single eye with a ruler. "You need to deoxygenate the combustion process."

"What?"

"Smother the fire!"

"Oh."

Daisy gave a thought to that, looked at the basket, again, and then, came up with something.

The drone, by that time, had reached a decision gate in its programming as to what to do. Although it felt and saw objects, it could not subdue them, as the supposed attacker wasn't seen, and the objects that were seen, were not human. It decided to refocus its duties to bringing down the only human it knew of.

It rotated to face Daisy, again, but instead of drawing a bead on her, it had to, suddenly, contend with a burning wastepaper basket being tilted up-side down and placed over it.

Ghostly Marcie, quickly, seeing the efficacy of Daisy's plan, grabbed a handful of books from a nearby shelf, and put them down on the basket. Daisy then leaned on the stack of books to make sure the drone was well and truly trapped.

They could hear the labored whine of the rotor, as the drone tried to escape from its hellish prison. Hot ash was drawn into its upper intake vent, choking the rotor's engine, while trash and the cramped space of the basket held down the propeller.

Soon, with an overworked engine and melting components, the inert drone's own smoke added to the dark cloud that was seeping out from under the overturned receptacle.

"Well, nothing here," Daisy concluded, as they left the cloudy room.

* * *

Marcie's attempted escape, quickly, devolved into a chase around the conference table, with the second drone firing and reeling back the missed dart, while she, desperately, ducked and serpentined past the chairs.

Meanwhile, the first drone still fought with the chair it was stuck on.

Every time Marcie ran to the door, the drone would drive her away with a shot to the door.

She knew that she could not maintain this pace forever, and decided that, now, was the time to counter-attack, so she stopped her run, which made the drone stop in its pursuit, to watch her, cautiously.

She thrust her hand into her jacket pocket, eager to pluck an Insta-Ice capsule from it and end the conflict.

Her pockets were, distressingly, empty.

Understanding that she needed a new strategy, Marcie implemented one. She ran past the drone, prompting it to chase her around the table in the opposite direction.

Her troubles were soon doubled, however, when the first drone, finally, managed to yank its dart out of the cushioned seat, and then sidled over to the door to bar Marcie from using it, when she ran by it, again.

Seeing this, she stopped running, again, to think. From the combatants' positions, Marcie stood to the side of the table, which sat between her and the drone guarding the door, while the drone that was pursuing her, hovered by the far end of the table.

Its programming was satisfied that this energy-draining chase was over, and the target was, now, trapped between it and its fellow unit. It locked-on to her, and for good measure, glided closer to her, for a surer hit.

It then applied sufficient charge to its taser system, as it, curiously, watched her, carefully, reach over to the table and pick up a lone clipboard. A futile choice of weapon, it computed, as one strike would be all that was needed.

Marcie stood where she was, as the drone approached her, and then looked over at the drone by the door. She then waited.

The drone hovered into position, and Marcie focused all of her hearing onto it. If she was in the right spot and angle, she would get one try at this.

The loud pop of the taser dart drove her reactions. The dart zoomed at her in a straight flight path, and she had moments to correct the stance and the angle of the board.

Her mind took a snapshot the distance of the dart, as it closed in. Now, was the time to do it, before it had gotten too close to evade, if she missed.

She brought up the clipboard up, with both hands, like a fan, and when the dart was as close as she felt comfortable, she swung the board up into the dart, like it was a shuttlecock, batting it away from her, and into the direction of the door drone.

The dart was heavy enough to still have momentum after the hit, and it was, here, that Marcie hoped that her aim was true.

The dart sailed into an arc over to the unsuspecting drone, and made contact with its conductive, metal shell, diverting the taser's full charge into its sensitive systems in one surge.

The door drone sparked, its eye winked out, its propeller halted its spin, and then, the machine dropped to the floor.

Quickly, Marcie reached across the table and grabbed the dart's wires, being careful not to hold the dart, itself, just as the drone was reeling it back.

She rolled over to the other side of the table, and although she was winning the tug-o-war with her lighter opponent, the drone was still gathering in more of the wire, getting itself drawn closer and closer to her.

In seconds, it would be close enough, that if she did not incapacitate it, and was forced to let go of the dart, it would be in position for a clean shot at point-blank range, and it would not miss, this time.

The wires before the dart, were taut in her hand, as she, desperately, looked for something to do with it. Looking down, she, finally, found that something.

With a final yank against the drone to slacken the wires, Marcie looped and tied them around the arm of a chair nearest her, then held her breath and let go.

The wires tightened, again, but they didn't slip from the textured upholstery of the arm, as the drone continued to reel in, until it was drawn into the side of the chair and was stuck.

Marcie wasted no more time and left the room, while the drone changed the pitch of its propeller, and, pathetically, revved, to no avail.

* * *

All three girls met by the receptionist's desk, looking a little shaken, but none the worse for wear.

"We've got those drones up here, too!" Daisy warned Marcie, upon seeing her. "G. M. and I had to deal with one."

Marcie nodded in the direction of where she was. "I know. I just ran into two of them. If the Phanplasm is using the generators to charge the drones, then he's using them to guard this place."

"He must be using this place as a hideout," Daisy reasoned.

"It makes sense," Ghostly Marcie added. "It's in the middle of town, his so-called 'hunting ground,' so maybe he's using it, like a duck blind, or hunting shack."

"Well, whatever the reason, we have to find the devices, or the plans to them, pronto." Marcie said, pointing the penlight's beam further into the office. "The only places we haven't checked yet are those two rooms, up ahead, in the rear of the office."

"I'll check the biggest room, first," Ghostly Marcie volunteered, pointing to the room with the opened door. "If there are any drones in there, then, at least, we'll know about it."

To save time, she flew on and soared past what looked to be a reinforced door, hanging weakly by a single hinge. It was, heavily, cratered with deep dents and its built-in security card reader was pulverized.

Daisy and Marcie went towards the other room which neighbored the chamber Ghostly Marcie entered.

Hanging on the wall outside the office's door, was a portrait or someone, disturbingly, familiar to Marcie, and told her the magnitude of importance that the office held.

It was a faded painting of Doctor Benton Quest, with a plaque below, which read, 'Founder.'

She wondered if this Quest was a different, and even, better man that the one from her universe, and if he and his extended family survived the fall of Crystal Cove.

Such answers would keep, she decided, in light of this fortuitous discovery, however.

"This is Quest's office," Marcie hissed. "If he has a computer in there, not only would it be tied to the building's mainframe, but it might, also, contain his own personal database. The plans to the energy technology we need could be in either one of those."

"Arr! Along with any other high-tech booty that his people had been working on," Daisy added, with piratical flourish. "Just ripe for the taking, eh, Cap'n Fleach?"

"Yeah!" Marcie, mindlessly, agreed, before catching herself. "Wait! What?"

"You're _drooling_ , there, Geekbeard," her friend said, knowingly. "I know, because that's the look I get when I see some cool stuff in a yard sale, or an auction."

"It's not like that, Daisy," Marcie, nervously, justified. "Since we're from another world, and the owners of this technology aren't around, it can be argued that this is simply a form of archeology. At the very least, it's as a finder's fee for our work, once the Phanplasm is dealt with."

Not convinced by Marcie's excuse, Daisy shrugged and said, "Uh-huh. If you say so."

"Okay," Marcie said, with breathless anticipation, while reaching for the door knob. "Let's see what's in there."

Before her hand touched the knob, Ghostly Marcie called out to them.

Out of curiosity and worry for the ghost, Marcie and Daisy, dismissed the possible treasures in the office, and walked over to the wrecked door and the dark chamber that lay beyond.

When they reached the threshold, Daisy noticed a small sledgehammer lying against the doorway.

"Now, that's a big key," she muttered. Then, they both heard their friend call out from inside the room.

"Hey, guys," Ghostly Marcie called out. "I think we might be too late. It looks like the aftermath of a shoe sale, in here."

The girls stepped into the room, now, lit by the ghost's light, and saw a distressing sight.

All over the floor were littered labeled, discarded, broken, and half-completed engineering projects and prototypes, the doors to their storage compartments in the walls of the vault, left open.

"I think it's safe to say that the Phanplasm went shopping," Marcie said, turning and leaving the vault. "That just leaves Dr. Quest's office. We found it, so we're going there, next."

"Arr!" Daisy growled, following her out with a smirk.

Marcie rolled her eyes. "Ugh! Come on."

Confused, Ghostly Marcie shook her head at the exchange and muttered, "Sometimes, I just don't get the living." Then, she left the vault, as well.

* * *

Marcie went for the door knob. It didn't turn.

"Rats," she hissed, looking over to her non-corporeal counterpart. "It's locked. G. M., would you do the honors?"

"Right," said the ghost. She passed through the stout door, opened it from the other side, and illuminated the room.

Once they all entered, they sauntered up to the desk that dominated the center of the office, peeked around, and saw the tower of the computer terminal sitting inside it.

"Jackpot," Marcie whispered.

Daisy looked at her in confusion. "Jackpot, how? Even _I_ know enough about computers to know that you need power to turn them on, and there's no power in the whole building. How do we get out with this thing? Drag it?"

Marcie gave a frown of thought, before Ghostly Marcie chimed in. "You can, in a way. I knew my way around a computer of two in my day. Let's look around for something I can use like a screwdriver."

Following her lead, Marcie and Daisy searched around the office, peering through bookcases, tables, sofas, and other furnishings.

Over at a low hanging shelf, Ghostly Marcie noticed something incongruous to the business decor of the room, a loose collection of small vials, some filled with a dark liquid, others, empty with just the liquid's residue coating the tubes' insides.

She turned her head to the sound of Marcie calling her back to the desk, holding something long.

"Did you find something?" Ghostly Marcie asked, when she arrived.

Marcie held out a brass-looking letter opener. "I hope this'll do."

"It will. Thanks," said the ghost, taking up the opener, and then crouching into the tower's space in the desk, to pull the computer out.

She went to work manipulating the end of the opener into the heads of the screws that held the computer's housing together, twisting them loose, until the side panel fell away, exposing the tower's innards.

"It would've been easier to just pass my hands into this thing and pulled the drives out," said the ghost. "But, they wouldn't come out with my hands, if I did that, so we do this the manual way."

She reached deep inside, parting away the nest of wires, and located the metal slabs that were the hard drives. Gripping them at their power line and interface connectors, she worked them apart from the drives and brought them out.

"Thanks, G. M.," Marcie praised.

"Nothing to it," the ghost waved. "Now, we better get moving. It's getting dark, and I don't want to be around when you-know-who comes home."

* * *

It was nearly pitch-black when they reentered the rear of the lobby, with Ghostly Marcie glowing on her friends' behalf, lighting the way, as they passed by the security office beside the administrative tower's elevators.

"Not a bad day's work, if I do say so, myself," Marcie said, holding the two hard drives in her hands. The secrets needed to, somehow, defeat the Phanplasm were there. Visions of inventions, particularly chemical, that her world, probably, never knew, were, also there, swimming in their precious platters, waiting to inspire her work for years to come.

She almost felt like skipping, when she heard a sudden gasp from their ghost companion.

She turned her head to what was the matter, and saw it, soon enough.

The door to the security office banged open, as if kicked, and the image of the Phanplasm, looking more frightening in the gloom of the lobby, than he ever did in the daylight, stared down at them, malevolently.

"Girls!" he hissed.

Screaming, the girls turned hard and sprinted for the shattered exit, far ahead, with Ghostly Marcie dousing her inner light, as she flew, to avoid giving the spectral predator an easier target.

As Marcie and Daisy got closer to the wrecked main entrance, splashing through the standing pool of water, they looked behind them to see if they were pursued.

The Phanplasm was gliding, silently, after them, stalking them, at an almost leisurely pace.

Daisy remembered the dangerous condition of the front doors, and warned Marcie, "Watch out for the glass in the doors!"

Following Daisy's lead, Marcie slowed a few yards from the main entrance, ready to power-walk, carefully, through the windowless doors, when she happened to glance, absently, to the far side.

The generator was still sitting there in the dark, but the two drones that were grounded by its side, were not.

"Now!" the Phanplasm cried out, from behind.

The two silvery drones floated out from the nearby shadows, their red optics locking-on to their targets, quickly, and flanked the two girls.

Taser darts fired out of their sockets, but instead of stabbing into their skin, the darts landed in the brackish water Marcie and Daisy were standing in.

Surges of current was pumped into the conductive pool, with their shivering, muscle-locked bodies completing the perilous circuit, their pained yells bouncing off the walls of the ruined lobby.

The hard drives fell from Marcie's trembling hands, as the girls collapsed just feet from freedom, into the water, stunned, paralyzed, and in the approaching Phanplasm's dubious mercy, the fingers of his outstretched hand, flexing, eagerly.

"On my order," he intoned to the waiting drones, as they reeled in their darts. "Fire tasers, continuously, until their hearts stop. Their meddling souls will please The Inheritor, greatly."

Suddenly, unseen by him, or the drones, an old coffee pot filled with rancid java floated from the, nearby, receptionist's kiosk. It, then, hovered over the machines and tipped forward, pouring its rotten contents into the vents in the backs of their upper hemispheres, shorting them out, severely.

The Phanplasm, looking for the attacker, managed to cry out, "What-" before the same pot, suddenly, flew end over end, in his direction, painfully, shattering the glass bottom against his mournful face.

Through his furious howls, he was just able to see through the pain, and located a floating, now visible, Ghostly Marcie, fly past him and back toward the rear of the lobby. He, immediately, gave deadly chase.

Ghostly Marcie, proving to be the faster of the two, desperately, used the vast width of the lobby to evade the Phanplasm, whenever he got too close to her, zipping into shadowed corners and zooming up towards the dark ceiling, all the while, having the larger ghost on her tail.

Coming up with a quick idea, the smaller ghost power-dove to the floor, pulled up and accelerated towards the elevators. It was her hope that if the lobby's open space was giving the Phanplasm too much of an advantage, then the cramp interior of the elevator shafts might slow him down, somewhat.

In either case, she reasoned, that as long as he was focused on her, she bought the other girls time to recover, hopefully.

She headed for the closed, inoperative elevator car doors, and then, rocketed through them, expecting the creature to flow through them, as well.

The Phanplasm soared to the closed doors.

Then, he stopped.

His fingers curled, and with an irate, predatory growl, and he gave the doors a hammer blow with his fist.

Looking around, quickly, he saw the door to the emergency stairwell of the admin tower. Snatching it open, he blasted up the staircase, enraged, willing to search every floor of the tower in the hopes of exacting a torturous feeding on the hated girl.

After that, the lobby was quiet, again.

Then, a head of frizzy hair, gradually, materialized through the elevator doors.

Ghostly Marcie, carefully, looked around. The Phanplasm was gone, and, up ahead, the girls still lay in the water, helpless, but safe. At the moment, she was safe, yet, she was left to ponder the obvious question of why he didn't just pass through the car's doors to chase after her...

* * *

The constant bouncing, starting and stopping, finally, roused Daisy and Marcie from their sleep, in the backseat of the car, as it trundled through the blasted neighborhood.

When they saw that the car was riding, dangerously, along with no driver, they both screamed.

Their screams prompted a startled Ghostly Marcie to scream, as she ceased her invisibility, sitting in the driver's seat, and trying to navigate the damaged streets in the night.

"What are you screaming for?" the ghost asked, recovering from the scare.

"Why are you invisible? I thought we were put in a car and set to crash," Marcie said, catching her breath.

"Me, too," added Daisy. "How did we get away? Did you help us?"

"Yeah," said the ghost. "Sorry about cloaking just now. Force of habit. I lured that bed sheet away, and then afterwards, I grabbed you two, and got out of there."

Marcie's memories were fast-paced and vague during their run-in with the Phanplasm. Then, she noticed that her hands were empty, and she feared the worse.

"Did you get the hard drives, G. M.?" she asked.

The ghost shrugged. "I've got them. They're in the back, with you, but you might not want to use them, considering what happened."

"What?" Marcie fretted. "What happened?"

"They took a beating, that's what happened," Ghostly Marcie explained. "Electrical damage from the tasers and water immersion totally ruined the platters inside."

"Oh, no!"

"Yeah. When things like that happen, time is of the essence. They might've been salvageable back at Mr. E's lair, but we've been out here too long. I'm sorry."

Marcie gritted her teeth at the affair. She knew who was to blame. "Ugh! That Phanplasm! I'd make him a ghost, _myself_ , if he wasn't one, already!"

Daisy rolled her eyes in fatigue and frustration at the loss of the devices' plans. "So, we got barbecued for nothing, then? Great. What else can happen?"

The car shuttered to a halt in the middle of town. Ghostly Marcie glanced at the gauges on the dashboard.

"We could be out of gas," she answered.

Considering how far a walk Destroido would be to them, the girls in the back, understandably, groaned.


	7. 7

_7~_

Early night had settled over Crystal Cove, but to the three girls, as they, wearily and warily, moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, the town took on the air of a predator-rich urban jungle, or a patch of deep enemy territory. Every errant ghost that strayed on the streets and the sound of every creaking, decrepit building they passed, or wind-borne noise was suspect.

They knew, for all the time that had passed since they escaped from Quest Research Laboratories, that they could not stymie the Phanplasm for long, and he would be on the move, eventually. When it came to the girls, this would be no simple hunt for him. This would be personal.

Coming out of a small, oblique side street, the girls exited to a wider thoroughfare, and at its corner, Ghostly Marcie stopped in slight confusion.

"Wait a minute, guys," she mused. "I think we've been going on the wrong direction."

Marcie looked pensive. "What do you mean?"

"The streets are smaller and narrower. There are no houses, so we're nowhere near the residential blocks. No big buildings, so we're not downtown, anymore, but we're not heading towards the industrial section, either."

The girls studied their surroundings, the streets, the landmarks, and geographical orientations so similar to their own Crystal Cove, and soon knew that the ghost was right in her assessment. They were heading in the wrong direction.

"You're right," Daisy acknowledged. "We're lost, but look on the bright side. If the Phanplasm was following us, at least we didn't lead him back to the lair."

"That's good to know," Marcie sighed. "But, we can stay out here, either. We're just sitting ducks, unless we find a place to lie low until tomorrow. Then, we'll find another car and get back to Destroido."

Ghostly Marcie nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Maybe there's a place around here that we can crash for the night."

They rounded the corner, and proceeded to pass a small patio that sat next to an antique-looking building whose broad sign had fallen off and rested face-down by the curb.

Marcie walked by the facade's largest window, and then, in the contrast of the night, the corner of her eyes caught the flicker of a weak light move, slowly, inside the building's dark interior.

She stopped and craned her head to the window. "Was that a light in there?"

"You saw somebody in there?" her dead double asked.

"I saw a light. I think somebody's in there."

Are you sure?" Daisy asked. "Nova said that no one survived the massacre."

Ghostly Marcie stared at the window, and assessed the risks of going in. Coming to a decision, she told them, "I'll go check it out. If it's a squatter, another ghost, or even a ghost squatter, I'll just say that we need a place for the night."

"Okay," Marcie said. "But, be careful in there."

"Will do," the ghost said, passing through the large window.

Subconsciously feeling like a pair of rabbits out in the open, the two other girls stepped closer into the shadow of the building, hoping that its presence would, somehow, shield them from the Phanplasm's hungry eye.

There, they stayed, until three minutes had, uncomfortably, elapsed. Daisy turned to the window and cupped her hands around a chosen pane, to block the ambient, outdoor light so she could peer in.

"Do you see anything?" Marcie asked.

"It's too dark inside. I can't make anything out."

Both girls then turned to the sound of the front door creaking open, slowly. No one was seen standing in the threshold, which, instinctively, raised their collective red flags, and made them hesitant to enter, right away.

"That might be G. M. letting us in, while she's invisible," Daisy assumed, nervously.

"Then, how come I feel like a bug walking into a Venus' Fly Trap?" Marcie muttered.

"It beats waiting out here," Daisy decided, taking the mysterious invitation. Finding her friend's logic as sound, despite her misgivings, Marcie followed her in.

"G. M.," whispered Marcie.

Although they were grateful to come in from the outside, cautiously, the girls' eyes and ears tried to tune-in to the obscure and musty interior. Eventually, their eyes began to adjust, with the ambient light from outdoors barely illuminating what looked to be a wide chamber, walled with dark, two-tiered niches and alcoves.

Marcie flashed her lit penlight at one of the alcoves, curious as to what object was filling its space. The thin beam of light shone through the wide visor of a large, rounded helmet attached to an enormous space suit. The haunted, emaciated, and skeletal face of an alien ghost, stared out.

Marcie jumped with a yelp, starting a chain reaction of yelps between Daisy and her, where they gathered, protectively, her flashlight, clumsily, spotlighting more monstrous occupants around them that reached out hands and claws yet they made no sudden movement towards the girls.

"What is this place?" gulped Daisy.

Marcie shivered. "I don't know!"

Before more questions could be asked, the far side of the room, which led further into the building, became gradually brighter. Why this happened, had the girls dumbstruck.

A long, bobbing convoy of small, lit, aromatic candles floated, silently, towards them. Some broke formation and hovered near the darkened niches, lighting them, and casting eerie shadows of the displayed evil that surrounded the duo. The rest ascended and circled overhead, dimly, illuminating the rest of the room.

Back-to-back, Marcie and Daisy looked at the creatures and hard men who surrounded them in the gloom, their fierce, vicious faces and muzzles frozen in malevolent snarls and fearsome stances.

Marcie, studying the still, gruesome figures that made their homes in the shelved spaces that prominently held them on display, uttered, "An exhibit? Who are these guys?"

"A veritable who's who of Crystal Cove's local criminal history," Ghostly Marcie said, appearing beside Marcie.

"Like Madame Clouseau's Wax Museum?" Daisy pondered aloud, while she tapped on the muscular arm of the burly and bearded Miner '49er.

"Pretty much," another voice said from all around them, one that sounded more matronly than morbid. "Welcome, all who love the mysterious and the macabre, to the Crystal Cove Spook Museum!"

In the middle of the gallery, appeared and descended the spectral image of Angie Dinkley, surrounded by a ring of small, floating candles.

"Oh, I wish we could have done that when we were still in business," she giggled in reaction to the flabbergasted looks on the human girls' faces. "We, probably, would have gotten far bigger crowds than we had."

"Mrs. D?" Marcie muttered, reminded of the alternate twin that she knew, and not, readily, expecting the closest thing she had to a mother appearing before her, as a spirit.

However, if Mrs. Dinkley was troubled that she could count her number among the deceased, her motherly bearing didn't show it.

"Oh, hello, dears," she greeted them. "I hope I didn't scare you too badly. Did the door open for you? That's good. Marcie and I were just talking about what my brave daughter and her friends did to save the world. You know, I always knew that the true reason Velma was so fascinated with mysteries was because it, obviously, came from me. The Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster, why Jethro Tull won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance."

"Are you alright?" Marcie couldn't help asking. She didn't want to dwell on the fact that something bad had happened to such a sweet woman like her.

"About being a ghost? Of course, I am, dear," Angie said, waving the issue away, with a warm smile. "Oh, I admit that I was concerned about my husband and I being sacrificed to an evil, extra-dimensional being while my daughter was out, risking her life, to do battle with it, but these days, I couldn't be happier. I have a whole new appreciation for the mysterious and the unknown, now that _I'm_ a part of it."

Daisy couched her question as tactfully as she could. "So, you do you live, uh, I mean, haunt this place, now?"

"Oh, yes," said the ghostly woman, nodding to the darkness behind her. "I'm filling in for Dale. He's in the back, haunting The Broken Spine. But, where are my manners? Marcie tells me that you've run into that bothersome Phanplasm, and you need a place to hide for the night. Well, you've come to the right place."

"My dad took me here, once, when I was little," Ghostly Marcie reminisced, fondly. "I first met V, here, when she was a tour guide. I can't believe that I forgot about this place."

"So, we'll be safe, here?" asked Daisy.

"Of course," Angie assured her. "This is may be a museum of villains and monsters, but it's also a sanctuary from them, as well."

The girls began to ponder what she meant by that, but their questions had to wait, because a grinning Angie had just announced, "Now, let me give you girls a tour of our museum."

* * *

Angie felt as if she had never died, at all, as she, happily, captivated a spellbound audience, once more, reciting facts and figures, gesturing to each villain and creature that stalked Crystal Cove's past, and lighting them, dramatically, with the candles that she controlled.

From the supernatural, to the extraterrestrial, to the technological, Angie showcased the frights from decades of their supposed evil, not once mentioning that every attraction displayed was a criminal and phony as a counterfeit two-dollar bill.

Still, it didn't matter. What mattered was the delight that her guests saw in her ethereal eyes, regaling to them a historical ghost story, far better than any that was ever told to them before. It was so clear to them that she was doing what she loved most, exposing young, open minds to the vast possibilities of the, seemingly, impossible.

Eventually, and unfortunately, as far as her guests felt, the tour had come to an end, and Angie announced, thoroughly, satisfied, "Well, everybody, that concludes the museum tour. Please, stay with the tour group, and follow me to The Broken Spine, where you may browse our gift shop for a lovely souvenir."

Daisy and Ghostly Marcie tagged along with Angie, and Marcie was about to follow them, when she noticed something in the dark, and pointed to a large alcove that Angie hadn't move a candle over to light, during the tour. It had width for two figures, but only one was present, the other one was missing, save for its bent support frame.

"Who's that one over there?" she asked. "Why didn't you talk about him?"

Angie peered over at the half-filled niche, and sighed. "I didn't want to mention that one, because it's not complete. It happened not too long ago. Apparently, a vandal broke in. It was the strangest thing. One day, someone, in a blue mini-van came by, and stole one of the displays."

Angie moved a candle over to the display, to show them who it was, and when the light fell on the sole figure's face, every girl loosed a scream in cold-blooded terror. Daisy and Marcie stumbled and crashed hard, on their rears, while trying to back away into a blind run, and Ghostly Marcie, fearfully, vanished.

A large, robed ghost with a dire visage hidden in the depths of a hood had appeared, frozen in the middle of snatching at them, hungrily, with clawed, manacled hands.

Angie was, deeply, perplexed by the reaction, and backed the candle away. "What's wrong?"

"We...thought that was him, the Phanplasm!" Ghostly Marcie gasped, rematerializing, with a shiver, when no attack came

Daisy sighed, heavily. "Oh, man! I thought my number was up, just now!"

"I'm too young for this nonsense," Marcie muttered under her breath.

"Is that's what the Phanplasm looks like?" Angie asked. "I never really ran into him, myself, but don't worry, this figure isn't real, even though I always complained to Velma about always telling the _customers_ that. It won't hurt you, I promise."

"Who _is_ that?" Marcie asked, shaken.

"Well, they were The Phantom Shadows," Angie said. "Cosgoode Creeps and Cuthbert Crawls, two lawyers who dressed up as ghosts to get their hands on the fortune of one Colonel Beauregard Sanders, a deceased, eccentric millionaire from Gatorsburg."

It was clear to Angie, from all of the girls' trembling, however, that her explanation about the exhibit did nothing to assuage their fears, proving that they had quite enough excitement for tonight.

"It's getting late," Angie told them, maternally. "I think it's time you were all settled in. Follow me, and I'll get you fixed up for tonight."

Rattled, the guests gathered close to the departing Mrs. Dinkley, walking and floating with her and her candles, out of that mom-and-pop Grand Guignol.

Whatever might have been said, dismissively, by that world's Velma Dinkley, about the venue, as far as the three girls were concerned, the Crystal Cove Spook Museum had truly lived up to its name, that night.

* * *

The portly spirit led them to a wide archway where a sign adorned its apex, which read, 'The Broken Spine Haunted Gift Shop and Coffee Bar.' Floating, flickering candlelight showed torches affixed to its entrance. No doubt, the girls thought, to give the place a medieval ambiance.

With an unseen twitch of Angie's nose, the torches sparked to life and blossomed fire enough to light the passage. Inside, torches that were attached to the room's support beams between bookcases, also bloomed, and cast a flickering coziness to the bookstore's interior.

"I'm sorry that I can't make you some tea to calm you down, since the town lost power, but feel free to look around, while I get some blankets," Angie said to them. However, their attention was held, at the moment, by the sight of books floating, slowly, across the room from one shelf to another.

"Oh, don't mind Dale, he's just organizing, again, it's become something of a hobby with him, now," she explained.

"Can a ghost have OCD?" Marcie asked Ghostly Marcie.

Ghostly Marcie shrugged. "Just another way we cope, I guess." she said, before she, a natural bibliophile, flew over and prowled along the aisles of books, browsing one curious volume after another.

Daisy, more interested in picking through the oddest knick-knacks and one-of-a-kind curios she could find, gravitated near the display stands and counter.

Seeing them fan out, and before she went into the building's store room, Angie took a moment to speak to Marcie.

"So, Marcie tells me that you and your friend are from an alternate reality," Angie said, matter-of-factly.

"That's true, Mrs. D." Marcie said. "You're not shocked by that, are you?"

Angie chuckled. "Oh, no, dear. That's the reason I see such a strong resemblance between you two Marcies. I always believed in the existence of other dimensions and higher planes of being, but tell me, is there an alternate version of me, as well?"

"Yes, ma'am," Marcie told her, wistfully. "She's the nicest lady I know. Ever since my mom and dad were divorced, she's been the closest thing I had to a mother."

"She sounds like a lovely woman," Angie beamed.

"She is, and, strangely enough, she's proof that some things never change, since she seems to have the same interests in the weird and unexplained that you have."

Angie brightened at that revelation. "She does? That's wonderful! If you ever get back, Alternate Marcie, could you ask her to perform a séance, or past-life regression on herself to contact me? I would love to compare notes."

Marcie had to chuckle at that, marveling at Angie's calm, suburban attitude about life, death, and everything in between and beyond. "Sure thing, Mrs. D. I will."

After Angie left, Marcie, absently, browsed along an intersection of aisles in the back. There, the two Marcies met, again, with Ghostly Marcie holding on to a book on alchemical formulae, with her thumb holding a part of the book she was currently reading.

"You know, I forgot that alchemy was the closest thing we had to advanced chemical science," the ghost said. "Talk about old school."

"It must have been a while since you came here," Marcie said, conversationally.

"Yeah. Dad wanted to show me that you could make money off the supernatural, just like he was doing with his Creepy Spooky Terror Land theme park."

That struck Marcie, keenly. "Your father had an amusement park, too?"

"Sure. What was the name of your dad's?"

"Fleach's Folly Factory."

Ghostly Marcie considered the more upbeat and whimsical nature of the venue's name, and then, nodded in approval. "Hmm, cool."

Talk of their fathers' businesses began to dredge up bittersweet thoughts in Marcie, and curiosity pushed her to ask, "Did you and your father get along, G. M.?"

The ghost looked up in thought. "Well, after I spent some time in prison-"

The statement knocked Marcie for a loop. "What? _You_ were in prison? What were you in for?" Marcie asked, riveted.

Ghostly Marcie was hesitant to say, but, finally, admitted, "Trying to wreck my dad's amusement park business."

Marcie was stunned at such an extreme act. "Why would you do that? I mean I'm not a fan getting into the family business, myself, but I wouldn't go _that_ far."

The spirit hung her head in remorse. "Would you believe for money and scientific fame? Yep, for a little while, yours truly was Prisoner 15118-394 of the Crystal Cove Co-ed Correctional Facility, and I thought being called Hot Dog Water was bad," she sighed.

"But, you're a minor."

"Yeah, I know," the ghost shrugged. "But, kids were punished pretty harshly under this town's penal system. Just another thing you can chalk up to the influence of The Evil Entity, I guess. Later, I debated with myself on whether or not, _I_ may have been under its influence, when I tried to hurt my father. But, if that was the case, then I believe it was V who broke its spell. In any case, when I was let out, my dad and I patched things up."

"Do you still talk to him?"

"Oh, yeah! You know, he haunts the amusement park, now, and sometimes, he uses his powers to run the rides that are still working. I'll bet he never thought he'd end up being a headliner in his own park, huh? I guess he'll always love that place," the apparition sighed, fondly.

"Yeah," Marcie said, quietly, thinking on what she had said to Angie about her double's similarities, seeing them in her own, and understanding them in her father's. Some things and some loves were truly transcendent. "I know what you mean."

* * *

It took the transformative light of the morning to exorcise the fears that the gallery and its denizens stirred up, last night. That same sunshine wended its way through the museum to, faintly, light the side of The Broken Spine closest to its entrance, as Marcie, Daisy, Ghostly Marcie and the spirit of Angie Dinkley stood around the front counter of the bookstore in conference.

"So, you were out last night looking for something to stop the Phanplasm?" Angie asked them.

"Yeah," said Daisy. "We hoped that we could find some high-tech way to capture him, but we've found nothing, so far."

"Well, you girls are lucky that he didn't get a hold of you. You could have been killed, or worse."

"Worse than getting killed?" Ghostly Marcie asked her, ironically. "If it were anybody else that we ran into, I would've doubted that possibility. But, as it stands, we've got to find something to use against him, and fast."

"It's too bad this Phanplasm can't seem to be reasoned with," Angie sighed. "He could be more relaxed and sociable with some hot, herbal tea, or maybe some crystals to realign his chakras, if ghosts still have chakras. Still, I'm glad that my protections could keep all of you safe."

"What do you mean, Mrs. D?" Marcie asked.

"Look above you."

The girls raised their heads and saw a curious sight. Hanging close to the ceiling, on strings, were twenty tiny plastic bags, each one filled with three objects: two small stones of differing color, with a thin sheet of bronze-like metal in between.

"Whoa!" they uttered in unison, wondering why they hadn't noticed them before.

"You see, weeks ago, when I first heard about the Phanplasm's attacks, I drew protective icons everywhere, and placed cuprum charms all around the museum. You couldn't see them, because it was so dark, last night. I even put a stone of protection in your pockets, while you were sleeping, especially yours, Marcie," Angie explained, pointing at the teen ghost."

"Why?" Ghostly Marcie asked.

"When we talked, last night, I sensed a dark aura around you, as if you were touched by an evil presence. I put the stone near you to protect you, but, for some reason, I can still feel it on you. That's very odd."

"Well, I was pretty close to the Phanplasm, when he attacked me on the street, yesterday," Ghostly Marcie said. "That probably was it."

"What, no eye of newt?" Daisy teased.

"Contrary to popular belief, eye of newt isn't good for everything. Besides, my charms and stones are more than adequate for the job," Angie pontificated.

"Well, I don't think the Phanplasm would sit still for anything that New Age. We better get ready to get out of here, while we have the sun. Thank you for letting us in, Mrs. D, we won't forget..." Marcie's voice started to trail off, as a strong intuition made its presence known to her, a, suddenly, inspired idea.

She, intensely, looked at one of the charms hanging overhead. "Wait a minute. You called your charms, _cuprum_ , didn't you? That's what you called the metal inside it?"

"Why, yes," Angie answered. "It's very good at transmitting all kinds of energy, even spiritual. When I combine it with my protective stones, I can make powerful charms that can absorb negative energy and redirect it back at an enemy."

Marcie whooped, aloud, "Girls! I think I know a way that we can beat him!"

"With meditation?" Daisy guessed.

"No! With Mrs. D's charms!"

"Charms?" scoffed Daisy. "What makes you think that'll work on something like him?"

"Because the secret to beating that thing was given to us by Mr. E, himself."

"What? When?'

"Back at the lair."

"Oh, yeah! That's right," Ghostly Marcie recalled. "Remember what Mr. Machine gave us in the lab?"

"That letter?" Daisy pulled the folded letter from her jumpsuit pocket, and read, again. "Sometimes, a mystery can fog the issue. When that happens, the answer is like an open window, clearing things up, with me on one side and you on the other. When you see me, what will I do?"

She looked to the other, in askance. "I don't know. See me, I guess?"

"No," Marcie smirked at the recluse's cunning. "Think literally. Answer it, as if _you_ were Mr. E. If I see you, then what will _you_ do?"

"See you?"

"Right! Oh, I get it!" Ghostly Marcie chirped up. "See you! Turn it into a pun, and it's C-u!"

"The symbol for the chemical element of copper!" said Marcie. "He wants us to use copper to stop the Phanplasm!"

"But, copper isn't spelled with a 'u,'" a confused Daisy pointed out.

"It does when it spells cuprum, the Latin word for Cyprus, a Greek island where copper was first mined," Ghostly Marcie counter-pointed.

"It just might work," Angie mused. "Humanity has been using it, and special stones and crystals, to work with spiritual energy since ancient times, protecting and strengthening that energy, even absorbing negative energies from it."

"There _is_ some scientific truth to it," Ghostly Marcie added. "Metals, minerals and energy do go together, like peanut butter and jelly. Maybe, we just have to find the right combination to fabricate a defensive weapon out of them, somehow."

"Well, we've got nothing else to lose," Daisy shrugged, not quite getting how metal and crystals could pull of a last-minute miracle. "So, what do we do, now?"

"Now," the ghostly Mrs. Dinkley said, with a wink. "I take you to my private stock."

* * *

It was later in the morning, when the transformation was complete. Where, once, there was a bookstore, gift shop and coffee bar nestled in the back of a quaint museum dedicated to showcasing the most bizarre rogue's gallery in Crystal Cove's local history, now, it had become a New Age tactical center.

Sitting on a table in the room's dining area, were opened, wooden boxes, lined with royal purple felt, displaying collections of small stones, gems and crystals that glittered under the bookstore's torchlight.

Nearby, tomes concerning the historical usage of those minerals, were taken from the shelves, opened and bookmarked, on tables where the group sat, pouring over them.

Behind the counter, the small blackboard, that was once used to scribble the day's specials, now, showed lists of selected crystals and gems for use in energy collection and negative energy absorption.

"These are the finest selections I have," Angie said, with a hint of pride. "I only sell these to special patrons. They have the strongest vibrations I have ever felt. They will serve us well."

She, reverently, plucked a stone from a box, and handed it to Daisy. "Here, try a Datolite."

Daisy reached out from where she sat, and cupped the little stone in her hand. It didn't feel any different than any other stone she might have thrown in her youth. She was about to put it down on the table, when she, suddenly, reeled in her chair.

"HOW DO YOU FEEL, DEAR?" came Angie's voice, blasting into Daisy's unprepared mind.

Daisy dropped the stone on the table top, and cried out, "Agh, Mrs. D! Why are you yelling?"

"Oh! Sorry, dear!" Angie thought-said, at normal strength. "I forgot to mention that Datalite is very good for psychic hearing."

"Okay, so the best stones and crystals we can use with copper are Black Tourmaline, Pyrite and Fire Agate for negative energy absorption and redirection," Marcie said, reading the selected stones from the list on the blackboard. "Now, all we have to do is get back to the lair and make something out of them."

Sitting in her pile of research books, and remembering what Angie had said about protective stones in their pockets, Ghostly Marcie pondered, as she reached into hers, "I wonder what my stone looks like."

Her fingers found and held the stone, but as she pulled her hand out, a small vial of dark liquid came out with it.

The ghost gasped and fumbled with the stone in her hand, while she tried to intercept the glass container, but both objects tumbled from her and hit the tile floor.

The sound alerted everyone else to the accident, who gathered around the distraught ghost girl.

"What happened?" Marcie asked, watching the liquid spread from the shattered pieces of vial on the floor, and incidentally, get closer to the fallen stone. "What's that?"

"Some gunk I found it in the office where we took the hard drives. I thought that it might be a clue about the Phanplasm, so I took it, hoping that we could get it back to the lair to get analyzed. It fell out of my pocket and broke," Ghostly Marcie told them, dejectedly.

Angie focused her attention on the liquid, and said, "That's it! That's the negative energy I was sensing from you!"

"I guess, with all of the excitement from last night, I must've forgotten about it," the ghostly teen admitted, sheepishly.

The liquid had almost spread to the stone on the floor, then a reaction occurred that made Angie point to the floor, and cry out, "Look!"

The liquid's flow slowed to a stop, in front of the stone, and, contrary to the natural slope of the ground, it began, incredibly, inching away from it, like a repulsed, living thing.

"Whoa!" Daisy exclaimed. "Check that out!"

Marcie peered at the substance, asking Ghostly Marcie, "Why is it doing that?"

"It might have something to do with the stone that was in my pocket."

"That's Black Tourmaline," Angie said.

"Which you said is good against negative energies," Marcie reasoned. "There may be something evil in that liquid to make it react like that, and if it has something to do with the Phanplasm, then the charms could be the way to beat him. Do you have a container? We can still take it back for analysis."

Angie glanced over at a napkin holder on a nearby table, and a few sheets of paper came out. From a stack of unused cardboard coffee cups, the uppermost one was lifted and floated over the spill on the floor.

Per Angie's control, the napkins dipped and blotted up the suspicious fluid and glass, until the paper grew dark, then the wet wad of evidence was tucked into the coffee cup, and a lid was snapped over it.

"That should take care of it," said Angie, moving the cup over into Daisy's waiting hands. Then, she, soberly, addressed the girls.

"You just saw how that stone warded off evil influences," she said to them. "But, you and the charms to have to be very close to the Phanplasm to have any real effect. Because of that, I can't, in good conscience, give you the stones. It's far too dangerous for any of you to use against him."

"I understand that you're worried, Mrs. D," said Ghostly Marcie. "But, we, now, have something we can use to stop that bed sheet from feeding on other ghosts. Maybe Mr. E can make us copper suits of armor, or use the stones as ammo in some kind of ranged weapon. Something."

"No. I can't let you do that," Angie shook her head, her maternal instinct to protect, making her, incredibly, resolute in her decision.

In the middle of this thorny issue, Daisy's eyes, suddenly, twinkled with intuitive inspiration, and she gave a most Cheshire Cat-like grin, telling everyone, "Guys, I think I have a solution."

"What is it, Daisy?" the ghost girl asked her.

"When it's too dangerous for the civilians to fight," Daisy chuckled. "Then, it's time to rally the troops!"


	8. 8

_8~_

Guppy the Great White snapped and banked in the air above the shark pool in reaction to the visitors in his territory, below.

Seeing this, the near-insubstantial body of Mr. E sat back in his chair, slowly, turning away from his larger wall of monitors to regard the humans and fellow ghost that approached his platform, like a corpulent king addressing a wayward court.

"I heard about what happened. Even among the dead," he called out to them. "News travels fast."

"I didn't think ghosts were into gossip," Marcie remarked.

"Hardly. I only act on it, if it's been verified. Think of it as another way I cultivate my sources of information." He waited until they were gathered before him, before he continued.

"Now, let me get this straight," Mr. E related. "On a tip from one of my former scientists, you went on a wild goose chase in Quest Research Labs, which I own, by the way, to look for technology to beat our hungry friend out there, when you should have been focusing on the clue I gave you."

"We went with the tip, first, because we thought we were on a deadline. Excuse the pun." Ghostly Marcie reported. "Now, we didn't find the gear because the vault was already ransacked, when we got there, and the reason we didn't come back with the plans was because we...dropped it in the water. But, we did figure your riddle out, afterwards, so thank you, by the way."

"Had it ever occurred to you that because Dr. Quest's lab worked for me, I wouldn't already have that technology in my possession?" their host asked.

"Well, we didn't know that," Marcie said. "In our world, Dr. Quest is a bad guy, but how did you know Mrs. D would have what we needed?"

Mr. E gave a shrug from his massive shoulders. "I didn't. I was hoping that if you'd solved my riddle, you would realize that you would have to look for the largest caches of copper in town, which is in the vaults of the abandoned Steelco factory."

"Well, we're not used to your particular brand of methodology, Mr. E," she said. "Besides, if you knew we needed copper, and you knew where it was located, then why try to have us go get it?"

"Because, it would have been risky sending out other ghosts to collect the copper with that Phanplasm flying around. If they were caught, then they were ghost chow, and if they ran, they might panic and lead him, here," he explained. "Humans would have attracted much less attention, and who gave you permission to call me by that name?"

"You did, you grump," Ghostly Marcie spoke up. "When you gave us that monogrammed envelope of yours instead of, you know, telling us what we needed, right then and there. Admit it, you just wanted to get back into the do-gooder game."

Mr. E looked slightly sheepish, as the truth was handed to him in so, annoyingly, irreverent a manner.

"Humph! You were much easier to control before the Diabla Mission," he muttered. "Anyway, we can still use Steelco's resources. I'll send people out to bring back the copper, despite the risk of running into that creature. In the meantime, we have to come up with a way to weaponize it and the minerals you brought back, to be effective against the Phanplasm."

"Which brings me to my question," Daisy said. "When Marcie, Nova and I found G. M. in the cave, there were all of those bucket-headed robots all over the place. Kreiger-somethings."

"Kreigstaffebots," Ghostly Marcie amended her.

"Thanks. If we could get some of those things back here, could your people put them back together, again, so we can use them?"

"Why in the world would you want them?" he asked her, incredulously.

"Why not?" Ghostly Marcie shrugged.

He turned to the ghost. "You're not entertaining this foolish idea, are you? They _killed_ you, and took my sweet Cassidy away from me, because Pericles ordered it!"

He turned back to Daisy, staring into her eyes, stonily. "They're a part of this sad town's past. Let them be, and let them rust, for all I care."

"But, Mr. E," Daisy reasoned, pressing her case. "Mrs. D said that her charms would have to be pretty close to the Phanplasm to have any effect, and since it'll be too dangerous for any of us to rush him, we'll need them," Daisy reasoned. "What do you say?"

The ghost's face darkened with a scowl, judging the matter as thoroughly as he could, weighing the cold-blooded murders they committed against the more positive scenarios that Daisy was pitching.

It was only when he acknowledged that time was of the essence, that it dawned on him that if they could work, then he should allow it, if only because he found himself wasting time, fixing blame on the wrong thing.

True, they killed and terrorized under Pericles' control, but it was never anything personal, on _their_ part. They were simply machines, simply weapons. It would have been as though he were blaming the gun for the murder, instead of the murderer.

It was a grim form of contemplation, but it convinced him to, begrudgingly, give this idea some merit.

"I say that you'd have had a bright future in marketing," Mr. E admitted. "But you don't have to hit the streets to find any working robots. There's a machine shop in the lair that Pericles turned into a mini-factory for churning out those monstrosities."

"Why?"

"He was making a reserve force, in case he ever needed more firepower, but they weren't his, originally. They were designed and built by Abigail Gluck, a former member of The Benevolent Lodge of Mystery, a sort of Mystery Incorporated of the past. It seems like a good idea, but my lair is too understaffed to make the kind of modifications you need. I'm sorry."

"But this Gluck could. Where is she, now? Can we get in touch with her?" Marcie asked when she saw Daisy become crestfallen.

"Only if you can hold your breath, or know how to do a séance," Mr. E said. "She's dead, in the same place where my Cassidy died, in her underwater research base, off the coast from here."

Just then, Ghostly Marcie straightened. "Well, I guess I'm going for a swim."

"What are you talking about?" Mr. E asked.

"Who better to trick those robots out, than their creator? If her ghost is still down there, I can get there, quick, and try to convince her to come back and help us."

"I don't know. What if she's not a pussycat, who's easy to charm, like Mr. E, here?" Daisy asked, skeptically.

The ghost teen shook her head. "We have to try, guys. We have to take advantage of every option we get."

"Will you be okay?" Marcie found herself asking; fearing for a being for whom crushing water pressure would not be an issue.

"Of course! What's the worse that could happen?" she asked back, glancing up at the fish swimming across the domed ceiling, with a grin that she hoped would assuage their fears. "I get eaten by a ghost shark? TTFN!"

With that, Ghostly Marcie faded without fanfare, leaving friends to look, worryingly, at the space she had occupied, and leaving her uncertain fate in the hands of a higher power.

* * *

A tiny ball of luminescence danced through the depths of the Pacific, sometimes following the currents' lead, and sometimes surging ahead against its chop.

Although it was miles off the coast of Crystal Cove, it stayed within its periphery, while it dived, its preternatural senses reaching out, as it buzzed the cliff face of an underwater canyon that wended its way along the country's western continental shelf.

Broad fingers of sunlight stretched as deep as they could to dimly illuminate the far, far bottom of this coastal scar. Here, predators like moray eels and amphibious skull cattle hunted for fish and Giant Pacific Octopi, and in the murk, the sphere of light could make out the dramatic remains of an aquatic research base that had long since settled into a crushed and rusting heap, down below.

As it descended, it studied the wreckage. Arms of steel that had once anchored the facility to the high cliffside were ripped away into twisted uselessness, leading to the dead power plants and the engineering stations that served them.

Further down, the exposed decks of the living and working areas of the base, whose domes and windows were cracked apart like egg shells, were turned into depressurized habitats for the opportunistic, Californian sea life.

The glow headed towards the lowest section of the base that, although damaged, escaped being completely destroyed during the fall and subsequent avalanche that partially buried the rest of it, a dark, circular platform that wore its tall, shattered dome like a glass crown, and rested in the center of a rough cradle of loosed boulders on the canyon floor.

The luminescence dove towards it, aimed itself for the high breach in the dome's apex, and entered. As the floating glow of intelligence, once more, took on the shape of the deceased Marcie Fleach, she beheld a strange environment.

The bottom of the platform was a huge, promenade-ringed aperture, whose irised bay door was half-closed due to power and mechanical failure, and whose circumference almost took up the width of the platform, itself.

Because of its size, the fact that it could open and close itself off from the sea, and the fact that the, once, intact dome sealed around the pen, keeping air trapped inside it, like a diving bell, it suggested to her that this place may have served as a submarine pen.

Ghostly Marcie floated down over the great opening of the bay, passing by a high catwalk, crusting with coral, with a defunct lever at its end that served as the gangway for the parked subs' conning tower boarding hatches and, manually, controlled the bay's door.

She had just reached the center of the pen, and then, looked at something that caught her attention. Littered about the promenade, below the catwalk, were the corroded bodies of pressure-rended Kreigstaffebots, serving as homes to bony fish, crustaceans, and small cephalopods.

With a nod, she knew that she came to the right place,

Then, suddenly, she hovered to a concerned standstill, as a sourceless brilliance began to grow from the entrance bay under her body, gradually, creating a shaft of light that almost stretched up beyond the ruined dome.

Energy resonated deep within her core, which trembled, like a crystal goblet against a persistent sound wave, a surrounding presence that carried with it the weight of age, life experience, and a long, dark bitterness, that told the young ghost that somewhere, in the gloom of the pen, something just took serious umbrage to her intrusion.

As a spirit, she was well aware that she was reborn into a new existence, but, as she was learning, with the Phanplasm, and now with this situation, it was not without its dangers.

Although the platform was flooded, a voice, sibilant and spiteful, seemed to whisper from below her, in the light, intensifying the threat Ghostly Marcie felt inside.

A twisted face of anger, suddenly appeared, spreading across the bay, like an oil slick, below her, threatening to rise up and devour her. "Geh raus! Du gehörst hier nicht!" ("Get out! You do not belong here!")

"Boy! I wish I had Marcie's English to Vengeful German Ghost Dictionary," Ghostly Marcie, fearfully, quipped. "But I think I get the gist. Hello!"

The face spat out more acrid German. "Sie sind hier nicht willkommen! Verlassen, oder ich werde dich verletzen! Schlecht!" ("You are not welcome, here! Leave, or I will hurt you! Badly!")

"Um, I don't know what you said, but I, sort of, can't leave, really," the young ghost tried to explain. "Besides, it'll be embarrassing to come all this way, and not have anything to show for it. Am I speaking to Abigail Gluck?"

"Wer will Abigail Gluck, der Träumer, der Wissenschaftler, der Detektiv...DER DUMMKOPF?" (Who wants Abigail Gluck, the dreamer, the scientist, the detective...THE FOOL?")

Ghostly Marcie realized that, communications gap or no, she wasn't getting anywhere with this. Better to wait a few moments, and try a dialogue, again.

She started to rise away from the bay, but the shaft of light brightened, and she was, suddenly, held in place by the power of Gluck's presence, as if invisible bands of iron held her, squeezing so tightly that if she were still alive, the breath would have, fatally, left her struggling body.

"We...We need...you...Stop..."

"Knock it off, Abby. Let the girl say what she came her to say," said a voice from above the ghost teen.

Craning her head up to see who she would, probably, have to deal with, next, Ghostly Marcie could see a light glowing by the end of the boarding catwalk, above.

The light, slowly, coalesced into a ghostly figure, clad in a casual suit, a ghost that exuded both a sense of sass and worldly confidence, as well as a deep compassion.

The tortuous grip sprung away from Ghostly Marcie's body, making her, instinctively, gasp for air that didn't exist. Another look up at her savior, and she recognized her, immediately, from her occasional spying of the municipal beach in the evening.

"Angel Dynamite!" Ghostly Marcie exclaimed, her surprise making her forget, for the moment, to call her by her real name.

"Now, I know that you're scared, honey, but don't you worry. What you felt was Abby putting fear in your mind. Now, what did you want to talk about?" Angel asked. "Does it have something to do with that Phanplasm creep running all over town?"

"Yes," Ghostly Marcie nodded. "Mr. E and some of us have come up with a way to beat him, but we need Miss Gluck's help to make it happen."

"Why?" Gluck's mental voice echoed.

Ghostly Marcie glanced at the metal men resting in the water. "Because we're going to use your robots, your Kreigstaffebots, to do it. They're not alive, they're pretty tough, and if you can help us modify them, then we can hunt _him_ down, for a change."

There was a silence, one that felt more contemplative than contemptuous. Then, Gluck answered, more humanely, more sadly. "Nein. Even in death, I saw what that beast Pericles did with my creations. Perverted their use, and shamed my legacy to further his aims. I built them to protect the Fatherland, not to slaughter the innocent, like Cassidy."

"Or me," said the ghost girl, before a gasp was heard.

From over the bay, the light faded, swiftly, and in its place, floated the spirit of a goggles-wearing woman in a period dress, her face, a mask of genuine shock.

"You?" Abigail's voice shook. "You have been hurt?"

"They killed me. Yes."

Gluck covered her mouth to control her emotions and composure, but the knowledge of her part in this girl's death, however incidental, was a hell of her own making.

"Oh...Oh, meine Liebe," she gasped. "I'm-I'm so sorry. You look so young! You should have lived a long, full life. You came here to convince me to help you, but you've only reminded me of why I can not have anything to do with my robots, again."

She glanced down at her machines in naked disgust.

"I could have swept them aside, months ago, but I let them stay to remind me of my sin. Yes, they were built for war, but I tried to use them for underwater research, for peace, afterwards. Yet, Pericles had them kill, again. They are too dangerous, and as their creator, _I_ am too dangerous. By my own hand, I have murdered Cassidy and you. Please, child, have nothing to do with me. Let me stay in my tomb."

"You're wrong, Miss Gluck," Ghostly Marcie said, floating over to face her. Distance would not have helped make her case; she needed to make her understand, directly. "I'm an inventor, just like you, and yes, sometimes inventions _can_ fall into the wrong hands..."

 _'Even, if the wrong hands are the hands that created it in the first place,'_ she thought, ruefully, remembering her own fall from grace.

"But, you didn't know what Pericles was going to do with yours," she pressed. "You didn't kill me, or Miss Williams. _Pericles_ did."

"I told you, Abby," Angel added, heartened by Ghostly Marcie's impassioned rationale. "You've been beating yourself up for nothing. You have to _forgive_ yourself, and find a reason to go on. If this girl has a way for you to do that, then maybe you need to listen."

Conflict played across Abigail's face was like an animated war map, with the emotional battle lines of hope and lamentation ebbing and flowing.

"Ach! What do you know, Cassidy?" Abigail scoffed. "What do you know of regret for your actions?"

Angel sighed. "Honey, I know more about regret in my life than a little bit, but this is not about me. It's about _you_ getting of that ghostly butt of yours, and proving to _yourself_ that Abigail Gluck is not down, yet, you dig?"

Bitterness and time had settled around Gluck, like concrete, reinforced by her stubborn, German pride, but deep within the darkness of all of that, an ember of altruism still smoldered, gradually, growing in strength by the combined goading of the two, hopeful ghosts.

She knew about the Phanplasm from Angel's comments after her talks with Mr. E, but she didn't want to get involved, simply because she felt hypocritical and shallow, and thus, unworthy of the attempt. How could someone who bore the weight of her own sins, be in any position to stop someone else's?

Yet, her own inaction betrayed the woman she was in the past, the good she accomplished in her lifetime, as a scientist and detective, using her mind to better the world, in her own way. How could she have forgotten that, in the fog banks of her self-pity?

With a sigh, Gluck asked Ghostly Marcie, feeling like a young girl taking her first tentative steps into the scientific and adventurous world, again. "Do you…really need me up there?"

"Yes, Miss Gluck, we do. Mr. E said that you were once a member of the Benevolent Lodge of Mystery. I think it's time for you to give evil the last laugh, and answer the call for justice, one more time."

The words struck home, and Abigail straightened with an old resolve that she once bore to an opposing world. "Jawohl, fraulein! You are right. Let us leave this place and defeat evil, one last time!"

Ghostly Marcie gave a grateful sigh, while Angel Dynamite, on her catwalk, raised a fist in the sea, triumphant.

"Solid!"

* * *

It had to held in the dead of night, in a non-descript forest. Although, whole counties of serfs had, secretly, pledged their allegiance to Greenman and his cause, for safety, only their most trusted representatives were permitted to attend and bring others who were leaning towards such a fellowship.

In his robed vestments, Greenman had to smile at the setting, alone. The dark wood, the secrecy, the mystery. They were the ancient backdrop of how the Druids once conducted themselves, apart from the world, and one with their gods.

But, there was a bittersweet tang to the proceedings. He would have to commit treason on the country he loved. He would have to do everything he could to bring about a religious, nation-wide revolution against the king, in the middle of, perhaps, the most devastating illness ever to befall the world, and he would have to use that illness to great effect, to hurt, save, and transform England.

"I will have to make great grievance to my land to make it worthy of your faith," he, humbly, prayed to the gods. "Grant me the will to make this happen. Strengthen your soldier for the task at hand."

He walked over to the tall stump of a mighty oak that was thunderstruck months earlier, and climbed atop it, to use as his stage to address the quiet multitudes gathered by muted torchlight, to hear what their religious and military leader had to say.

"The church stands with its king, but he does _not_ stand with you!" he intoned. "Days ago, my gods told me that this country would be given a crisis, a mighty test of faith! A great plague is stalking the people of Europe, and would soon set its fearful hand upon us! I told Edward this, and how we could survive it."

A woman in the audience asked, "How?"

"We need to close our seaports from the rest of the world, if just for a little while, to protect our families from this evil!" he answered.

He paused for dramatic effect, letting the setting his narrative was painting, sink into their provincial minds.

"Unfortunately," he continued. "Our _good_ king would not listen, and decided that continuing trade with dying countries was better for him. I am sorry, good people, but the only trade he was willing to conduct was _your lives_ for _more coin_ to fatten his purse, and the purses of his courtiers. You mean nothing to him!"

The collective sounds of worry rising to a risky roar of outrage, pleased Greenman, inwardly. He knew of the people's complaints concerning their wanting to be free from serfdom and the low wages they produced, coupled with the fear of dying that the plague was placing into their hearts. The Black Death and the discontent of the people truly were, in his mind, heaven-sent.

He raised his hands, beseechingly. There was no time to let up, now.

"Good people, you know, from the stories of your fathers and your forefathers, of my ageless struggles, my long fight to bring the good faith of the old gods back to a chaotic world. You know that those same gods that I bow to have blessed me to be undying, that I may carry their honest word to the unbeliever. Yet, some of you may have doubts about the power of the faith I serve. Tonight, you will doubt no more."

With a calling wave of his hand, a large, burly man climbed up the stump to stand beside Greenman, equipped with a small table, and armed with a broadax, whose edge gleamed in the firelight, from a very recent whetting.

"Do not fear, my followers," he told them, solemnly. "I am only taking you on a journey."

Greenman said nothing else, took to one knee, and laid his neck across the table. The crowds had seen enough executions in their day to know how this would turn out, wondering if there was nothing to this, but the ravings of a suicidal heretic.

The professional headsman stood beside the kneeling prophet, lined up his raised axe high over the vulnerable neck, and then, swung down and true.

The ax bit into the table top, and the head rolled away to the gasps of the people watching, with some of them even fainting at the brutality of the spectacle.

The executioner picked up the dripping head by the hair, and held it up for all to see. It was no trick of the eye, as Greenman's blank, sightless gaze looked out to the shocked masses. Then, the miraculous, or the horrifying, occurred.

Greenman's body stirred.

At first, it was seen as the natural twitching of the condemned after the sentence, which many of them had witnessed before. But, in complete consternation, they had never seen that same body rise, and then, stand, unsteadily to his feet, to await the headsman.

The, otherwise stoic, executioner blanched, but composed himself enough to, gingerly, give back the headless body's property, which it then, carefully, aligned with the stump between its shoulders and set down.

A few moments passed, and then, the skin and tendons around the neck fused, and Greenman's eyes blinked and flickered back into returning consciousness and clarity. The executioner had already backed away, by then.

Those same eyes, now, focused on the people, once more, as he continued his speech, satisfied that his graphic example had been made.

"I make no secret that I want this England to be the seat of a great and holy empire, bringing peace, knowledge, and fairness to all corners of the earth, but in all of my years, I must confess that I, myself, have made no successes."

His audience began to look slightly confused by that statement. Tales of his adventures and campaigns had been the stuff of wide legend. Were they only lies, until now?

Greenman saw their confusion, and thus, knew that were listening, completely, and that he had them.

"No, my good people. Those successes were made by those who followed my humble banner. It was _they_ who crushed armies underfoot, torn down the houses of the false faiths, and been the kind and healing hand to the recanted and the sick. It was _they_ who have been my soldiers, my voice, and my good, right arm, and I pray that _you_ will be my strength, as well."

The people nodded in agreement, amongst themselves, moved by Greenman's beheading and resurrection, and swayed by his social and religious message.

"The king and the church have turned their collective backs on you, to die, while they wall themselves up, in safety, to outlast the plague! But, I say that it should be the other way around!

"Take up my banner, my good people! Leave your cowardly priests behind, and follow a faith that will not betray you. One that existed long before their precious churches and castles stood. One that will give you succor and raise you to greater heights that the clergy and the nobles ever could!

"Help me! Help me close down the ports and warn off the foreign ships that carry the disease. Tell them, by word, or by the point of the sword, that England shall not fall to the corruption of the non-pagan world! Help me, my brave people, to save England, from its corrupt clergy and nobility! Save our land from _itself_!"

The roar of allegiance, buoyed by the long dream of social equality and protection from the plague, could have been heard from across the local countryside.

By the time the local sheriff and his deputies came into the wood, later that morning, to investigate, the congregation had long since left, but the seeds of revolution and insurrection had already taken root in English soil.


	9. 9

_9~_

"Did you check on Nova?" Daisy asked Marcie, while they and Mr. E stood in a hallway of one of the lower working levels of the lair, outside a locked Machine Shop Number One, by their feet, rested two medium-sized bags stenciled with the brand of The Broken Spine, and laden with small, smooth stones.

"Yeah, she's still sleeping in one of the guest quarters," Marcie answered. "I guess the trip took more out of her than we all thought. Mr. E said that the lair had more than enough supplies to double as an emergency shelter, so if things go south, at least she'll be safe."

Daisy cocked up an eyebrow. "You know something we don't?"

"Not really, but considering what we've been through, already, it never hurts to plan ahead."

"Fair enough," Daisy shrugged. "Speaking of being safe, I hope G. M.'s alright where she is. It already blows my mind that we can count a _ghost_ as a friend."

"Ditto. My scientific world-view is now, officially, rebooted. Proof positive that this is the universe's world, and we just live in it."

"Are you girls ready?" Mr. E asked, standing by a walled keypad. "I, finally, figured out this door's blasted code."

"You know, for a while, I didn't think you'd come," Daisy replied. "What with you always stuck in your chair, and all."

"Why?" he asked, glaring, defensively, at her. "Because I'm fat? I'm not fat! I'm _stout_!"

"Well, actually, because I thought you could only haunt your shark pool, and couldn't get out," she explained.

The former businessman rolled his eyes, and sighed. "For all of our sakes, my dear, I hope this isn't waste of time. I've fired more people than Cape Canaveral, for less."

"Trust me," Daisy coaxed. "This will make us all happy. Has the copper come through, yet?"

Mr. E canted his head to the side, as if listening to something only he could hear, which, actually, the case became. "I've just been told, telepathically, that the first load had just arrived in Destroido's lobby. There's been no attack, so far, and another load is coming."

"Then, let's get this party started."

Although he could have simply passed through the wall of the machine shop, Mr. E had to remember that he had guests who couldn't, so after he tapped out the entry code on the keypad, the shop's ponderous doors parted after months of sealed disuse.

Once everyone stepped inside, the girls were struck by the resources within. It was immense, walled with metal shearing and fabrication equipment and lathes, CAD and 3d modeling computers, work tables, painting rooms, walls of power tools, electronic parts, and a rainbow of supported, spools of wiring of various types.

"Wow, I think I know a certain Momma's Boy who'd love to move out of his home to live in a place like this," muttered Daisy.

"Jason?" Marcie asked, bemused.

Daisy shook her head. "Red!"

"It's fortunate that I still have these facilities on hand," Mr. E said. "They served well when Pericles and I needed to do more...secret R&D work that wasn't on Destroido's books. We could have used the shops and labs in Destroido, but that pretentious feather-duster wrecked every floor above the lobby, and nearly bankrupted the company with those stupid skull cattle of his."

"Skull cattle?" Marcie asked, wondering what such a thing would look like, outside of a dude ranch.

"Never mind," Mr. E grumbled.

Daisy pointed to one side of the room. "Hey, look!"

Standing along a far wall was a dark, silent army of new Kreigstaffebots, forty-strong, and staring out with dull, red, inactive eyes, their presence promising indefatigable resilience, unswerving loyalty, and unceasing carnage, if enough of them were produced.

"It's kind of intense seeing them up close and intact, like this," Marcie said. "Like they can switch on at any minute, and just wreck the place."

"I hope not," Ghostly Marcie said, as she, suddenly, appeared in the doorway, behind them. "This is my first time being down here. I spent so much time spying for Mr. E, that I hardly saw the place."

"If that was the case, I could have given you a tour," said Mr. E, glancing towards her.

"G. M., you made it back!" Marcie exclaimed, gratefully, watching her float in the threshold.

"I trust that accomplished your mission?" Mr. E asked.

Before she could answer, a Kreigstaffebot, suddenly, rattled where it stood, and appeared to turn itself on, its eyes casting a light blue glow instead of the customary crimson. It walked, with a stiff clank, from its group, towards the visitors. Then, it spoke in a heavy, synthetic voice that was as much intimidating, as it was, decidedly, feminine.

"That pernicious Pericles may have stolen my robots, but only I, _truly_ , know them, inside..."

An ephemeral light flowed from the robot's armored plastron, causing the light to flicker from its darkening optics. In front of the still machine, the light metamorphosed into the determined image of Abigail Gluck.

"And out!"

"How's _that_ for an entrance?" Ghostly Marcie commented, smugly.

"Miss Gluck, your reputation precedes you," Mr. E. said to her, bowing, respectfully. "As a fellow former member of a mystery-solving group, please, make yourself at home, and feel free to use any and all of my resources for the duration of your stay, here."

"Danke, Herr E," said Gluck, bowing back. "Marcie filled me in on the situation on the way, here. I am ready to help stop this Phanplasm, before he devours every spirit in Crystal Cove."

"You know, girls," Ghostly Marcie said, coming up to Marcie and Daisy, with a hopeful smile. "This might just work."

"I hope so, G. M.," Daisy sighed. "By the way, did you ever take that goop you found in Quest Labs to a chemist to get it analyzed?"

"Yes, before I left. They'll let me know when they find something." other than the fact that gave off some bad mojo. But, one of them did say that it was partially organic. They're still running test."

"Okay, then. We've got it all together," Marcie said. "Let's leave Miss Gluck to her work, while we work on trapping ourselves a gobbling ghost."

* * *

"I would think it was simple enough," Mr. E said, as he sat back in his swiveling chair, gesturing at his monitor banks, back at the shark pool. "We spy on him. The Phanplasm may have the run of the town, but there's nowhere he can hide from my camera network. If he causes a disturbance, anywhere, I'll know about it. The question, then becomes, 'What to do about it?'"

Marcie assumed a thoughtful pose. "Well, it's not a city, but Crystal Cove is pretty big. With all of that space, it's going to affect response time getting to a hot spot. The only way to get around that is coverage."

"Like how?" asked Daisy.

"We set Crystal Cove up like a grid, and put a Kreigstaffebot on every square."

Ghostly Marcie looked skeptically at Marcie. "I like where this is going, but I don't know. Like you said, it's a big place. I don't think we have enough robots to pull *that off."

"She's right," Daisy replied. "But, maybe we could cover more ground, if we make the grid wider, so that each square covers whole neighborhoods, instead."

Mr. E shook his head. "We only have forty of those robots. We still don't have enough. We'd be spreading ourselves too thin."

Marcie thought for a moment, and then said to their host, "Then, we go about this methodically. You've been monitoring the town, so you've seen when the Phanplasm attacked. Which areas of town had the most attacks since you've been seeing him?"

Mr. E looked thoughtful, and then said, "The center of town and the residential districts."

"Of course!" Ghostly Marcie exclaimed. "Places where people, who put up a fight, died in the greatest numbers, near their homes and places of business. More ghosts would be sighted there."

"And that explains why he protected Quest Labs with those drones," Daisy added. "He _was_ using it like a hunting lodge, because it's downtown, and like any good hunter, he'll stay where the game is."

"Right. So, that's where we'll set up our robots, in those two areas, to cover as much of them as we can, plus a few outside the areas, to cover any gaps."

Mr. E nodded at the soundness of the plan, so far. "The robots can be assigned numbers and programmed to patrol a given zone in those areas. If the Phanplasm is detected in that zone, that robot will radio in, and try to capture him. If he escapes, he'll just fly into another zone. Eventually, well have him."

"Works for me," said Marcie. "Let's grab a map, and work out our zones."

"I can do one better," Mr. E said, "Say the word, 'map,' aloud."

"Map!"

Instantly, every screen winked away its image, and, working in sync, the whole collection of monitors on its largest bank, painted the collective image of a wide and towering map of Crystal Cove.

"Voice input. Not bad," Marcie nodded.

Suddenly, Ghostly Marcie straightened with a thought. "What a minute, guys! Aren't we forgetting something? How are we going to get those walking tanks to where they need to go?"

"It would take too long for them to walk there," Mr. E said. "Destroido has trucks, but my drives are gone."

Marcie gave a clever smirk. "Maybe, but who do we know who has trucks _and_ drivers?" The answer hit the other girls, like a bolt.

"The Chief!" they said, together.

Satisfied that they had a game plan, Marcie gave a glance to the wall of monitors. Knowing that she was matching wits with a cunning, powerful foe, the collection of screens opened up the vista of Crystal Cove to her as it, truly, was here, a game board.

The sheer mentality of this adventure, appealed to her, and a keen, Machiavellian thrill passed through her body, as if a ghost had, and she smirked, again. "It feels like I'm playing chess."

Mr. E noticed that she understood what a powerful edge the monitors provided, and saw the beginnings of moves and counter-moves being played out behind her eyes, because of them.

He nodded, and said, knowingly, "Now, you know how I feel when _I_ come here."

* * *

"My trucks?" The Chief asked the girls, over the noise of said vehicles revving up to leave the yard and move away more debris. "What do you want them for? I thought you were working on getting that Phanplasm guy."

"We are," Daisy made herself heard. "That's why we need the trucks. We've got some...uh, equipment that we need to get out there that'll help catch him."

"Well...we're just about finished clearing another section of town," the Chief explained, looking around, and spotting three well-traveled pick-up trucks parked in a far corner of the yard. "We've got a few pick-up trucks that we use for light hauls. I can, maybe, spare those and some drivers, but don't tie them up too long, they have to get back here before we close up for the day."

"No problem," Daisy assured him.

"Where do you want them to meet you?"

"At the abandoned Destroido Corporation building," she said.

"Alright, they'll be there."

* * *

The Machine Shop had played host to a symphonic din of focused work, as Abigail Gluck and several spiritual technicians manipulated tools, both powered and manual, by hand and telekinesis, and proceeded to, carefully, strip Kreigstaffebots out of their armored carapaces, in denuded groups of ten.

Their shells were then collected into a pile on the floor by a large work table, where other ghost engineers took the panels and drilled anchoring holes, connection slots, and grooves into ends of their contours to, strategically, hold what was to be applied, next.

Working by another table were the most unlikely members of Gluck's crew: ghostly jewelers from local shops in town. With thin sheets of copper, cut, exactingly, to conform to the curvature of the armor pieces, these craftsmen and women made fittings on the metal sheets, and, carefully, secured Mrs. Dinkley's donations into them, based on diagrams worked out by her on the placement of the stones for maximum efficiency.

On another work table, electricians were given the newly bejeweled armor, wiring the copper connectors underneath it to retrofitted versions of the EAT devices, which were rebuilt in miniature to fit into the retractable weapon cradles of the Kreigstaffebots' forearms. Upon armor reassembly, the devices would be tied into the over-all systems of the robots, with Gluck's guidance.

After laboring a little over four hours, and all was, finally, completed, a call was sent to summon Mr. E and the girls, who stood by the shop's doorway, in silent amazement at the wonders Abigail and her workers had wrought in so short a time.

Marcie gave a low whistle. "It looks like Santa has a contract with the military," she joked.

With ramrod posture and mechanical precision, the forty Kreigstaffebots stood before the visitors by the threshold. Their glowing, crimson optics announced that they were functional and operational, but there was a stark difference in the way they looked.

They still resembled iron-clad parodies of a World War II Nazi soldier, but now, they gleamed in the shop's overhead lights from a brilliant, white paint job, which set off the glittering flash of the copper-plated armor, studded in Black Tourmaline and Fire Agates on their chests, which gave the robots the look of ancient shaman, clad in vestments of hammered gold and precious stones.

"They're beautiful," Ghostly Marcie gasped.

Gluck nodded in appreciation. "Danke schon. Since they were programmed to no longer kill, I wanted to give them a positive, new look."

"Then, they need a new name to go with it," Daisy suggested. "How about calling them, the Hippy-trons?"

That submission was met with sour, disapproving faces.

"Okay, okay," she demurred.

"I think I've got it," Marcie said. She then regarded Abigail. "They were once called Kreigstaffebots, right? That meant 'warrior-bot.'"

"Ja," Abigail nodded.

"Well, how about its opposite? Peace-bots?"

"What's that in German?" asked Daisy.

"Frieden...bots?" Marcie answered, uncertainly. She glanced over to Abigail to silently gauge whether she had said it, correctly, and if she approved of the name. A nod of endorsement from the German, confirmed everything.

"Friedenbots, it is. Are they ready?"

"Friedenbots, what are your directives?" Abigail commanded her robots.

As one, the machines intoned in their deep, intimidating voices. "Wir sind hier, um Frieden zu machen!" ("We are here to make peace!")

"And?" Gluck barked.

Snaps and clicks were heard coming from powerful motors in their arms, then the panels covering those forearms blossomed open like petals, revealing stone-studded, copper-circuited, energy collectors underneath, and the exposed EAT devices, in the center, resting in their brachial cradles.

"Schütze die Geister! Stoppen Sie Phanplasm!" ("Protect the ghosts! Stop the Phanplasm!")

"Scan for negative ghostly energy signatures," Gluck ordered them. Simultaneously, the optics of all of the newly-christened Friedenbots glowed green in a sensor mode, and their heads swiveled to cast an intense stare upon everyone and every corner of the room.

"Scannen..." ("Scanning...") the robots announced, then they all looked ahead, once more, satisfied. "Keine negative energiesignatur erkannt!"("No negative energy signature detected!")

"Good!" Gluck nodded. "What will you do when attacked with negative energy?"

"Absorbieren!" ("Absorb!")

"And then?"

"Umleiten!" ("Redirect!")

Abigail swelled, slightly, with a personal pride. "Very good. Now, we just have to point them in the right direction."

"I think I know the perfect place to flush him out," Ghostly Marcie posited, with a devious smirk. "Bots will hunt."

In reaction, the Friedenbots' free arms snapped up to, simultaneously, make the classic peace sign.

"Frieden!" ("Peace!")


	10. 10

_10~_

The breadth and width of England had raged for five years in the blood and fires of social revolution and religious civil war. Already simmering due to class warfare between the commoner and noble, allied with the priest, the simultaneous burnings of England's seaports was the ember that set the whole country ablaze.

Afterwards, life was difficult for the first few years during the passage of the Black Death, as England was forced to live under an illegal, self-imposed, yet necessary embargo, with King Edward, publicly, railing against the commoners' Greenman-led guerilla tactics, and the order to put their leader to death, soon following.

Naturally, the influential clergy, and the nation's traders and merchants, all balked at the social chaos brewing in the face of a pending pandemic. But, when news from returning government spies and quarantined sailors began filtering in on the social collapse being wreaked overseas, and the resultant death tolls of whole countries ranging from Italy to Morocco, the naysayers, the government, and indeed, the rest of the country, soon fell into line behind the brash decision, to the point where Edward tried taking credit for the whole isolationist movement in an effort to save face and political credibility.

In the interim, Greenman was never idle. When he wasn't taking his best men to destroy the seaports and putting to the torch any that were being rebuilt, he held secret meetings in the woods to tell all who would hear him that this harsh, yet life-saving measure was the idea of the Celtic gods, and not his own.

Below the notice of the king's militia, preserved accounts of Greenman's earliest campaigns were disseminated amongst the rest of the disquieted commoners, who began to find their voices and, openly, nurse discontent of the government and the public threat of excommunication, if they ever converted to the ancient gods of nature.

Secretly, most did, which was reflected in plummeting church attendance, and more, desperate, doubtful, and fearful that their current faith would not be enough to stave off the hand of the Black Death, soon recanted, as well.

As the underground pagan movement gained more and more traction, royal edicts were launched, forbidding hospices and apothecaries from treating none but nobles and the military.

This pressure only brought the old ways of nature to the fore, in the return of powerful potions, unctions and salves, strengthening the rebel soldiers and give them a fueled edge in combat, allowing collaborating kitchen workers, and archers to lay low their enemies with the deadliest of debilitating poisons, and to heal all from but the gravest wounds.

The people began to understand that with the ancient tools of the pagan, they were on actual equal footing with the government's forces, and hope for victory was possible, which spurred those who were indecisive, before to, finally, commit to the cause.

The neighboring countries of the United Kingdom were, also, influenced by the religio-political tumult. Their nobles feared similar actions, and closed their borders to England to preserve their societies. However, at the first hints of rumors of treason, crackdowns arose and flourished, so that insurrection, eventually, became a forgone conclusion, as commoners, soon, took the lessons their English counterparts learned, and slowly began their own revolutions.

As those countries' seaports were sabotaged and destroyed, for fear of contaminated ships coming to port, Greenman took political advantage of the disruption by meeting with the leaders of those rebel groups, and helping them unite with his. Such consolidation would see Welsh, Scottish, and Irish rebels create a complex network of tunnels branching under guarded borders to move food, weapons, supplies, the wounded, and critical information between them.

With their military losing strength, monthly, the nobility and the clergy felt the uncomfortable squeeze of defeat coming in from all sides, until Edward was forced to consider making peaceful concessions to appease the people.

When a meeting had, finally, been arranged, it was discovered, to his horror, that Greenman and the people had something else in mind, exile of the deadliest stripe.

By force, Edward, his surviving family and high ranking members of England's clergy, were chained together, put on a ship, crewed by loyalist members of the navy, off the coast of Dover, and told to sail off to whatever diseased country would have them. If they refused, then the small, nearby catapults loaded with barrels of pitch would convince them.

When the ship sailed but a few miles out, Greenman, satisfied, ordered the barrels lit and launched at the ship.

While the ship was consumed in the conflagration, he said, in celebration of the people of England returning to the ways of their forefathers, and to the cheers of those present, that their first human sacrifices, of so high a caliber, to honor the gods who helped make their victory a reality, had happened.

As news of the monarchy and the clergy being stamped out, spread through the United Kingdom, similar assassinations and exiles of the nobility and clergy began to happen within those countries. In due course, the whole of the UK was leaning, strongly, pagan, with the rebel leaders promoting cross-border trade to heal the economy of the country, as a whole, and with Greenman's secret help, install puppet rulers in all of their governments, starting with his own.

With his secret world history book, he knew exactly when the Black Death would end, which was soon. While England was in the throes of social chaos, his secret weapon for combating the disease was almost ready. With it, and the recanted Admiralty's help, he would begin to spread his word and military might, swiftly, across the face of a weakened Europe and beyond.

And to all who would oppose his noble crusade, he figured, they would be better off dying from the plague.

* * *

The ironically, bucolic sounds of nature could still be heard through the more-or-less intact streets of the residential sections of town. Although not as badly touched by the destruction wrought in other parts of Crystal Cove, the broken windows and rent doors, told stories just as tragic.

The front lawns of homes were either littered with discarded furnishings, or the half-cleaned bones of owners who died resisting on their property, so that instead of being brought to The Evil Entity to sate his appetite, they fell, and sated the appetites of the burgeoning stray pet population.

However, if one had the equipment, or the natural ability, he or she could see children playing in the streets of a particular block, at least, the apparitions of them.

Tiffany, a formerly brown-haired girl with an overbite, and a "victim" of the defunct Que Horrifico, turned her laughing attention away from freckled Arthur Baywosenthal, another fellow "victim," for a moment, to see a large, hooded vision descend from the skies over the neighborhood.

Even for a ghost, her terror was deep, based on all of the recent stories she had heard of the Phanplasm from her, equally, dead parents.

"It's the Boogie Man!" Tiffany screamed, causing a chain reaction of screams, when the other children looked up to see the predator approach.

Ghost children either had the sense to scatter, or were so frightened that they were rooted to the spot, shivering in their invisibility, in hopes that this nightmare creature of local legend would lose them.

The Phanplasm, seeing them vanish, proved to them just how vain such a tactic was, by guessing their positions, sidling up to them, as if attracted to their very fear, and absorbed their essences with callous flicks of the wrist and waves of his hand.

Confused by the attacks and too scared to flee, Tiffany backed against the side of an abandoned car, with the Phanplasm moving in to devour her. He raised his hand for the "kill," and was suddenly stopped by a sharp kick above the hemline of his lower robe by an irate Arthur.

The distraction was enough to bring his attention down to the ghost boy, and allow the boy to yell, "Run, Tiff! Run!"

Arthur's scream and distraction bought Tiffany enough time for her to regain her wits, pass through the car, and use it as cover to make a flying escape from the other side.

Concerned for him, she turned her head to look back at Arthur, in time to see him, painfully, fade into a collected cascade of balls of light. In her grief, she kept flying over the abandoned houses of the neighborhood, gaining more and more distance from the terror who took her friend.

"Scannen...Negative energiesignatur erkannt!"("Scanning...Negative energy signature detected!") said a nearby, guttural voice.

The Phanplasm, who watched her arc over the houses and, momentarily, debated on whether to pursue, noticed someone walking around the corner of the block he was on. Someone who clanked and shone, like a white knight, in the noonday sun.

Quizzically, he stood his ground, studying this stranger, with his odd armor and green eyes. Was this another construction worker or debris removal expert, like the ones who were crawling all over town and disrupting his daily hunts? Or was he someone trying to stop him, directly, like those annoying girls from before?

Whoever he was, the Phanplasm noticed that the stranger marched towards him, not hesitant with fear, as with so many others were.

"Schütze die Geister! Stoppen Sie Phanplasm!" ("Protect the ghosts! Stop Phanplasm!") the stranger intoned, making the Phanplasm hesitate when he heard his name mentioned in that tangle of foreign words.

When the stranger got close enough for the creature to feel threatened by it, the Phanplasm raised a hand, preparing to brush him aside, and into the living room of a house, across the street.

The air between the ghost and the stranger rippled with telekinetic power, but instead of the "knight" being flung away like an uninteresting toy, the Phanplasm felt the odd and troubling sensation of feedback, as the stranger stopped and stood to face him.

The "knight" focused his attention on the Phanplasm and uttered, in a strange, guttural language, "Absorbieren!" ("Absorb!")

The "knight's" arm pointed and opened up at the elbow, like a steely, mechanized flower, at the Phanplasm.

"Umleiten!" ("Redirect!") the knight said, pointedly, to him.

A bolt of energy lanced out from the center of the arm cannon, striking the Phanplasm hard enough to drive him through a nearby house's picket fence, and into the front yard, gashing it, deeply.

Confused, the ghost struggled to stand. He would have attributed the effort to, somehow, having the metaphorical wind knocked out of him, but as he, slowly, got upright, again, he noticed that it the meta _physical_ wind that had left him, and he felt...wrong.

His vision became unfocused, his center, unbalanced. He felt sick and weak, there was no other way to describe it, and with the stranger, now, capitalizing on his incapacitation, the Phanplasm felt, uncomfortably, nervous.

He raised himself, unsteadily, from the lawn to counter-attack from a higher position, thrusting his hand out at the armored combatant, to tear a section of the picket fence, and blast it against the stranger's chest.

The wooden slats of the fence shattered into white kindling against the unmoved armor, and exposed it to more of the ghost's offensive power.

"Umleiten!"

Another burst from the arm cannon slammed against the Phanplasm's shoulder, causing him to spin and crash, musically, through the front window of the house, and land into the, already, disheveled living room.

Weakly, the Phanplasm tried to pick himself up from an overturned sofa, and found that more of his strength had left him, as he looked out from the destroyed front window to see his attacker stalk him from across the lawn.

The stranger aimed the arm cannon through the broken window, and the ghost hissed in pained frustration.

He summoned as much strength as he was able, launched himself backwards, narrowly avoiding another stored energy cannonade, and flew, recklessly, up the stairs. Moments later, he shot out of a closed master bedroom window, raining shards of glass upon the stranger's helm.

The Friedenbot raised its head, as glass fell on its shoulders, to track the Phanplasm's flight from the neighborhood, calculating his general bearing. Then, it radioed in its report, and awaited further orders.

* * *

In the minutes that followed, the shark pool of the lair became an energized command center, with Mr. E following the path of flashing zones across the computerized map of the town, from his chair.

Behind him, Abigail, proudly, watched images from the smaller bank of monitors that displayed the Phanplasm coming to land in a given neighborhood to rest or hunt, only to run afoul of a vigilant Friedenbot guarding that particular suburban zone. He would then be attacked and run off, just to be intercepted and ambushed by another Friedenbot from a more distant suburb than the one he thought was safe.

Every Phanplasm counter-attack left behind a stronger and stronger dark energy "scent" for their sensors to track, allowing their heuristic, no-nonsense AI to predict his next location when he escaped, coordinate amongst themselves faster with their built-in radios, and plan more effective ambushes, like hiding in deserted buildings before they struck.

The lair's PA system buzzed with terse, Teutonic reports of their confrontations, his escapes, and his bearings from the robots, translated by Abigail, while Marcie, Daisy, and Ghostly Marcie cheered every time the Phanplasm had the wind taken from his sails.

The creature had realized, by now, that the suburbs were too dangerous to stay in, and so he, eventually, dashed out to its periphery to catch his breath and formulate a strategy, but the few outlying Friedenbots had caught him off-guard, in those areas, and forced him on the move, yet again. Those machines then radioed to the lair that their target was headed in the direction of downtown.

"It's working! We're keeping the pressure on him! If he goes where we think he's going, next, we can spring the trap, and catch that flying bed sheet!" Ghostly Marcie crowed.

"Don't underestimate him, mein kinder," Abigail warned. "You _must_ think like a hunter. He's our prey, now, but prey is at its most unpredictable when it knows that it's cornered."

Marcie nodded at her wisdom. "You're right, Miss Gluck. We'll head out in the car. The Friedenbots'll tell us where he's heading, and we'll track him, to see where he goes. If he goes someplace else, we'll try to follow him there, and then call the robots in with your Signaler."

"Then, what are we waiting for?" Daisy whooped, as she jogged down the monitor platform's curving ramp. "I'm driving!"

* * *

The Phanplasm flew, low and weakly, over the rooftops of the downtown office buildings, watching every one of them for signs of treacherous movement.

Since none of those dangerous, mechanical men pursued him into the skies, it proved that they could not fly, and so, he was safe, up there. But, he knew that he could not stay aloft forever. His strength was waning, and he had a sacred mission to complete.

Scanning through the urban monotony ahead of him, the Phanplasm, finally, saw the decrepit, Futura-style building he needed to return to, and with a cautious dive, he bore down on Quest Research Labs.

The ground proved hazardous to him, so he did not land by the shattered front doors and enter through the lobby. Instead, he pulled out of his dive, and flew through the destroyed windows of the scorched office floor high in the administration tower. However, his entry had not gone unnoticed.

Far below, a cadre of Friedenbots, hiding in a small building across the street from Quest Labs, had waited, their sensors for tracking the Phanplasm, set to its highest gain possible to detect him from long-distance, and they found him.

Spurred by the data, they marched out towards the target building's facade. From the creature's height, he could not hear the still locked door frames being rent and wrenched to the sides to allow the less flexible robots passage.

Understanding that there was no power in the building, they sought and found the doorway that lead to the emergency stairwell, next to the lobby elevators, that led up the tower, and took it, but not before sending in a report that their organic and energetic masters, desperately, needed to hear.

* * *

In the car, heading towards downtown, Marcie held in her hand, a device that looked like a bulky mish-mash between a cell phone, a walkie-talkie. This was Abigail's Signaler, a device that offered mobile communication between the robots and the humans on the field, and call those robots to the humans' location, if necessary.

She noticed the flashing of its big text window, the signal of an incoming call, and glanced down to read the message. She finished with a tight grin on her face.

"He sprung the trap!" she said.

The car accelerated across the ruined streets. The girls didn't want to miss this.

* * *

In the admin tower, the interior of the main office of that floor was blighted with mold and blackened with old fire damage, despite still affording a grand view beyond its melted windows, but the Phanplasm was not interested in any of that.

Throughout the room's decrepitude, the only thing that was, relatively, clean was a sheet that, protectively, covered a tall object underneath, surrounded by portable generators, their many cords running under the sheet, like tentacles, and their synchronized puttering, incidentally, masking the sound of the Friedenbots' approach up the stairs.

He walked over and snatched the covering away, revealing a tall, wide glass cylinder, containing a dense, sparkling, swirling, multi-chromatic fog, and capping a heavy, humming base of technology, kept operational via the power of the generators.

The whole set-up looked like a giant curio, but it was what happened next that proved the most curious.

The Phanplasm brought up his hand, and wearily, placed a glowing palm on the glass. The mist within began to brighten, its swirl, reactively, speeding up, and it seemed as if more sparkles were added to its mass, looking like a fireworks show in a cloud bank.

Then, the palm stopped glowing, and the illuminated mist, eventually, settled back into its stir.

After taking a moment to rest, he walked over to an incinerated desk and opened its uppermost drawer, where three small vials of dark liquid, rolled inside. He plucked one out, popped open its stopper, and drank deeply, gasping afterwards.

Glancing back at the cylinder, he muttered, "These should please The Inheritor. I hope."

He walked back to the cylinder, and then began unplugging the generators' cords from the ring of sockets around the base. Then, he stepped away from the large device and brought his hand up, commandingly.

The cylinder began to lift, by inches, from the floor. It wobbled, for a second, before it was righted and lifted higher, then was held at that height.

He chuckled to himself. "Practicing moving and stacking all of those cars in town really paid off."

The office door, suddenly, burst open with a kick, so hard, that it ripped away half of its hinges. The noise was enough to make him lose concentration and almost drop the machine.

Quickly setting the cylinder back down, the Phanplasm reached out with his hand and, telekinetically, snatched the old desk from the floor, slamming it into the first robots that were coming in through the threshold.

It was only when he saw the broken end of a vial rolling away from the wreckage, that he, woefully, realized his mistake in his, reactionary, choice of weapon.

"My blood! My _blood_!" he wailed, more angry with himself, than with these damnable machines.

As if in response to his words, the Friedenbots droned and droned, as if driving themselves into victory, "Schütze die Geister! Stoppen Sie Phanplasm! Schütze die Geister! Stoppen Sie Phanplasm!"

With the loss of the strange vials, he wanted to stay and tear them apart with his telekinesis, but because their bodies were proof against his power, and his need to serve the mysterious Inheritor was more pressing, he stayed his hand, but only from attacking them.

As the robots, clumsily, tried to fight their way through the threshold and the desk's debris, the Phanplasm raised his hand, jerking the large cylinder into the air, and with a grunt of effort, leapt from the burnt-out windows, and into the skies above town, with the device in tow.

* * *

"Rats! He's on the move!" Marcie said, after reading the disappointing report from the trap team.

"What? He's flying, again?" Daisy grumbled, as they entered the periphery of the downtown area. "I thought that he'd be so worn out, by now, that the trap would've gotten him! Man, he's slippery!"

Hearing that the Phanplasm took to the sky, again, Ghostly Marcie said to them, "Stop the car. I'll see where he went."

When Daisy did as she was told, Ghostly Marcie lifted herself out of the backseat, passed through the roof of the car, and rocketed straight up, until she was hovering just high enough above the town's skyline to take in the vista of Crystal Cove.

Since the Phanplasm was, presumably, leaving downtown, she could, conceivably, spot him, if he was still in the area.

Remembering the general location of Quest Labs, Ghostly Marcie turned to look in that direction, hoping that the creature was not already lost in the immensity of the sky, due to distance.

She peered as hard as she could against the brilliance of the day, searching for anything that would catch her attention: a small flock of birds, a plane passing high overhead, anything.

Then, she saw it, a tiny figure flying though a patch of cloudless heaven, arcing from the district, and taking a bearing towards the Crystal Cove River, with another object tumbling close behind.

Quickly, she descended back into the idling car.

"I think I saw him," she reported. "It looks like he's heading for the river. Can't be anything there, except the reservoir, so I'm going to follow him and see where he lands. You guys and the robots meet up with me, there."

"Alright, G. M.," Daisy said. "You be careful out there."

"No problem," the ghost girl assured." Don't be late!" And with that, she flew out of the car, again, and accelerated in the Phanplasm's direction, making sure to maintain a very discreet distance from him.

Below, Daisy took the artery that navigated in and out of downtown, heading riverside, while, with a press of the Signaler's call button, Marcie had the Friedenbot army leave their positions, all over Crystal Cove, and follow the car.

* * *

In the sky, Ghostly Marcie noticed that she had to slow her flight, every so often, because her quarry would slow down _his_ , and she found herself closing the distance.

His body language, also, suggested that it was hard maintaining his altitude, as if burdened. The ghostly girl surmised that it might have had something to do with the strange, glassy thing he was holding aloft. Apparently, he was having trouble keeping it and himself in the air.

Underneath them, the reservoir wound itself by the strong river. Ghostly Marcie stopped and hovered at a distance, and it was over its concrete flood control channel, that the Phanplasm, finally, descended.

He touched down by an immense drainage pipe, where an innocuous blue van was parked. There he, gently, set the cylinder down by the van's rear doors and opened them.

Descending, herself, Ghostly Marcie faded from sight, and landed by the front of the van, which, she noticed, was dented on both fenders, with paint and primer, deeply, gouged off.

She stepped away, nervously, when the vehicle shook with the loading of the cylinder, and then, saw the Phanplasm enter the driver's seat and start the engine.

He backed the van up and oriented it, so that it was pointed in the direction of the wide drain pipe, making Ghostly Marcie frown to herself. In moments, he would drive into the depths of the crude, branching tunnel system under the town, and any pursuit would be lost.

She decided to step in front of the van's path, and materialize before the van moved forward, causing the driver to seethe in vexation.

"Get out of my way, _meal_!" the Phanplasm hissed at the teen ghost, wishing that she was still alive, so he could run her over.

Ghostly Marcie ignored him; she needed to keep him where he was, to buy time for the girls and the robots to arrive, and so she advanced towards the van, and then, passed through the front of it.

There was a quiet knocking about under the hood, and then, the engine coughed and sputtered into inactivity. The van's distributor cap dropped to the ground between the front tires and zoomed off into to the darkness of the pipe.

"Well, that's phase one," she muttered, as she emerged, again.

She moved out to the open space of the channel's basin floor, and then, turned to raise her fists in bellicose fashion.

The Phanplasm recognized her challenge, immediately, and if he could smile under his hood, it didn't show, as he casually stepped out of the van, and floated over to her, with slow anticipation.

"I'm going to make such an example of you," he chuckled, darkly. "I only wish your little friends were here, so they could see it."

"So do I," she muttered, softly.

Her only warning of the incoming attack was the Phanplasm yelling a battle cry and thrusting his arm out at her. She dodged the absorption beam, feeling its painful prickling along the side of her body, and, literally, flew into her opponent.

With effort, she lifted him up and, blindly, drove him into the side of the van. Instead of them both passing through, harmlessly, the impact made the van rock, denting it, slightly.

Enraged and stunned, he tried to clutch her in a draining embrace, but she saw that coming, and let herself fall, passing completely through the concrete bottom of the channel.

He stepped away, warily, from the van to plan what to do, next, when the ghost girl flew out of the side of the van with enough velocity to slam a fist into his hood, driving him back, and making him land, hard, on the ground.

The Phanplasm rose up, unsteadily, and flexed his clawed hands. They could touch, which meant that if he could get a good hold of her, he would see to it that those claws would carve out the very essence from her, with slow, delicious agony and torment, on her part.


	11. 11

_11~_

"Frau Gluck, what's going on? We know that the Phanplasm was headed for the reservoir, but why are the girls sending _all_ of the robots there, too?" Mr. E asked aloud, when the monitor map displayed multiple glowing dots, the representative Friedenbots of the downtown area, moving off towards the river's direction, followed by the outlying troops from the suburbs. "A small contingent of the closest robots should have been enough."

Abigail, not one to be at a loss for words, couldn't understand the sudden tactic behind it, herself. It was overkill. But, maybe that was it, she wondered, literal overkill.

"The Phanplasm was greatly weakened by the Friedenbot gauntlet, Herr E," Abigail explained. "Maybe the girls decided to finish the creature off, once and for all."

"Understandable, but reckless," he countered. "They should hold some of the robots back as a reserve. What if the creature eludes them, somehow, or outmaneuvers the girls by tricking them into thinking he's weak and on the run, only to draw our forces away, perhaps into a trap of his own?"

Abigail couldn't debate with him on those issues. They were legitimate questions. Was if the Phanplasm, truly, was that cunning?

Before anything else was said, Ed Machine floated up to the monitor platform, and approached his former employer, who regarded him.

"What is it, Ed?"

Ed held up a sheet of paper by his thumb and forefinger. "Sir, I've just received the test results on the strange substance the ghost of Marcie Fleach procured from Quest Labs."

Mr. E leaned forward in his chair to read it, and when he finished, he stood from his chair, and spoke low to Machine, giving him his stern orders. "Ed, find the others, and tell them to meet us at the reservoir."

"Yes, sir," Machine grunted, and then, he floated up, until he reached the domed ceiling of the shark tank, passed through its exterior waters, and disappeared.

Mr. E marched down the curving path from his monitor platform, calling out to his guest. "Frau Gluck, you have to come with me. I think you'll be interested in this."

As she left with him, the lab report lay on the floor, next to his chair. On its face were the findings, printed in bold type, saying that a substantial amount of the dark liquid's chemical composition was avian blood.

* * *

The Phanplasm growled through the pain, as he reeled from another unseen blow to the side of the head. He looked around his immediate surroundings and could find no trace of the ghostly teen, who had faded from sight before she began an invisible campaign of hit-and-fly attacks.

Another blow on his back made him stagger forward, and he swiped blindly, his claws slashing empty air.

With a frustrated howl, the taller ghost raised his arms, hovered over the basin floor, and spouted beams of absorption to the four winds, blasting at any area that he hoped that Ghostly Marcie had the misfortune to be in, but there was no sound of pain from contact.

Once again, she had eluded him, and worse, he let her antics get to him, making him deplete more of his strength in that fruitless attack.

"Is baby finished with his little temper tantrum?" the ghost girl taunt-thought to him, emerging unseen from the cover of the van's undercarriage.

"When I get through with you," he gasped, slightly. "You'll wish you moved on before meeting me."

"Believe me, I wished that was the case, but I can't have you snatching away one ghost after another," she said, flanking him, quietly. "Why even do that? Were you a victim of the massacre, too? Are you doing all of this because you can't cross over? If you stop all of this foolishness, my friends and I could help you."

Because there was no physical sound to her "voice", the Phanplasm could not pinpoint her direction with it, but he felt he needed to answer her. He was more that confident that she could do nothing with the information, anyway.

"I was chosen by The Inheritor with a great and awesome task. The eradication of every spirit in Crystal Cove, and for all of your efforts, you will just be another anonymous ghost that I capture in my claws. Prepare yourself."

Ghostly Marcie took that warning to heart and stopped "talking," curious as to what he was going to do next, as the moment hung in the still air.

Then, the Phanplasm rotated in his hover and began to head towards the pipe's massive entrance.

"I don't know what you were trying to achieve by delaying me, but once I find my distributor cap, I'm going down into the tunnels, and you and your little friends will lose me," he said, evenly, as he reached the mouth of the pipe. "Don't worry, though. I _will_ come back for you."

Ghostly Marcie fretted. If he finds the cap, he'll fix the van and escape. It was as simple as that. She had to keep delaying him.

"Not if I can help it," she challenged, launching from where she stood, still invisible, and flying towards him.

The Phanplasm, imperceptibly, slowed, filling the center of the entrance with his body, but leaving enough gaps between him and its sides to make it enticing to pass through. He would get one chance at this.

Ghostly Marcie twisted in her flight to thread the gap, but as she passed by him, he felt her body brush across one of his arms, the trigger he was waiting for.

He twisted around, reaching out for where he anticipated she would be, and clutched her thin arm, like a sprung trap, violently yanking her into a painful stop.

"No!" Ghostly Marcie yelped. She tried to shake loose and fly off, but her struggles were only rewarded with a tighter grip, the claws of his hand, biting into her arm, as the Phanplasm began to drag her into the darkness of the pipe, like a spider with his prize.

Realizing that she failed her friends, and that he was pulling her further and further and further in to prevent her from escaping, she panicked, turned visible and invisible in an erratic, but ultimately, futile defense.

All the Phanplasm knew, as they both disappeared into the maw of the pipe, was that he was one happy cat who had caught a very troublesome canary.

The mouth of the pipe flickered with the internal light of a, purposely, prolonged feeding, accompanied by the ethereal wail of Ghostly Marcie, that, finally, died away to merciful silence, as the pipe grew dark and quiet, once again.

* * *

Daisy, slowly, drove along the railed, concrete lip of the reservoir, giving Marcie time to search the length of the channel for any sign of their friend, or their quarry, as well as allowing the closest marching Friedenbots to catch up to them.

Up the path, a few hundred yards, Marcie could see what looked like an old utility vehicle abandoned in front of a pipe set in the channel's side. Since their approach was from the ridge above and behind it, she could only see its rear and one side.

"I see something," she told Daisy. "Keep going."

As they came closer, Marcie could see that the vehicle was a blue van, with its hood open and the bulk of the vehicle obscuring someone tooling around in its engine.

"You mean that van, over there?" Daisy glanced to the side, while trying to stay on the road.

"Let's check it out."

The car stopped, and the girls exited to gather by the railing, and look down.

"Excuse me!" Daisy yelled at the hidden mechanic. "Have you seen a friend of ours? She kind of looks like my other friend, here! Or maybe a ghost monster?"

The hood slammed shut, and the Phanplasm moved from the front of the van to address them, directly.

"What does he look like?" he asked, mockingly.

The sight of the Phanplasm was unsettling enough, along with the question of why he was working on a vehicle when he could fly, but the absence of Ghostly Marcie put any such questions in the back of their minds.

"Where's G. M.?" Marcie asked, hoping that she was lost, or late getting here.

"Closer that you think."

Marcie knew that his admission answered all of her question regarding their friend's whereabouts, as she didn't look at him, so much as tried to look _through_ him, to his innards, where Ghostly Marcie, evidently and sadly, was.

"You…fed on her," she said to him, almost numb from the loss. Daisy heard and covered her mouth in shock. They were too late for her.

Although Ghostly Marcie showed her the moments of her death at the behest of Pericles, the pain of watching that was tempered by the distance of time, and, admittedly, not knowing the ghost girl that long.

But, having gotten to know her counterpart, and realizing that she fell while working with _her_ , it changed everything. She had never lost anyone close to her, to death, not friends who traveled with her through dangerous and wayward space-time, not family, estranged or not. But, here, in this accursed mirror town, with the possible second 'death' of Marcie Fleach, it cut a hole into her heart with a blade of pure, morose insight.

 _This_ was what Mystery Incorporated had to contend with towards the end, every victory paid for in loss. Loss of dear friends and dearer loved ones, loss of identity when they understood who they truly served, loss of a hometown, and, ultimately, a loss of youthful innocence.

Her grim epiphany was interrupted by the clanking of the nearest Friedenbots gathering by the railing.

"Scannen...Negative energiesignatur erkannt!" they chanted, homing in on the Phanplasm.

Marcie glanced at the robots, as they looked down on their quarry, like predators waiting for the alpha's command to bring him down. They did not have to wait long.

"Robots, turn him inside-out," she commanded, icily.

"Jawohl!" they intoned, pointing their arm cannons at him and tracking his movements.

The Phanplasm, for his part, couldn't leave the area. He couldn't out-fly them, and even if he could, he would be leaving his precious cargo in the van. His mysterious master would do far worse than what these machines were capable of, if he failed.

Faced with nothing left than a futile gesture of defiance and self-defense, the Phanplasm raised his hands to the implacable line of robots by the railing, a line that grew larger with each group that caught up with them, and tried to knock them away with every scrap of telekinetic strength he still had.

Their armored bodies, easily, absorbed the attack, and then, returned the favor, in a barrage that made him scream and wither where he stood.

Self-preservation demanded that he leave, and take his chances with his master, at a later date, but it was already too late.

He fought through the debilitating pain of the redirected attacks, to float off the ground, in attempt to take off, but that, alone, depleted his reserves, and one more cannonade, finally, brought him crashing to the hard ground, beside his van, with a, decidedly, _human_ thud.

The girls, above, watched his fall with grim satisfaction, and were, at first, tempted to tell the robots to keep up the attack, until there was nothing left, a fitting reversal of what he commanded his drones to do to them in Quest Labs, when something happened that made them wait.

A ball of light, slowly, rose from the Phanplasm's prone body, and it looked to the girls as though their wish for his demise had come, unexpectedly, true, but then, the illumination elongated into a lean torso, sprouted lanky limbs, and finally, a head whose mop of kinky hair flowed, wildly.

Ghostly Marcie had been loosed from the prison of the creature's body, and was reborn, yet again.

Marcie and Daisy threw themselves over the railing, slid down the side of the channel, and ran over to the disoriented ghost girl.

Ghostly Marcie looked around, groggily, as the two girls rushed over and hugged her, but since she was still gathering her wits, she was intangible, so Marcie's and Daisy's arms kept passing through her, and they ended up hugging themselves, and not caring.

"What's going on, guys?" she asked, before the last stark memory appeared in her mind to shock her into both mental and metaphysical coherence. "The Phanplasm! He-"

"It's okay, G. M.," Marcie assured her, with a grateful smile. "You did it! You slowed him down enough for us to stop him! We won!"

The sound of pained moaning attracted Daisy's attention to the dull lump of inert robes on the ground. "Now, let's unmask this clown, and see who he really is."

She reached down, as the Phanplasm sat up and leaned against the van, completely drained, and yanked his hood back, revealing the all too-human head of a thin, big-nosed, dark-haired man gasping to catch his breath, a trace of dark liquid, drying from the corner of his mouth.

"Who the heck are you?" Daisy asked him, while the other girls gathered around him.

"S...Sidney...Merciless," the man wheezed at them. "Failed parapsychologist, at your service. I fear and hate the dead, and have been working on ways to capture and get rid of the blasted things for years, so I can become a "ghost exterminator," under the pretense of keeping the living safe from spirits."

"Wow," Ghostly Marcie deadpanned. "I've never seen a ghost bigot before."

Ignoring her, Sidney continued. "I learned about the tragedy in Crystal Cove, and the treasure trove of parapsychological research that it could have given me, so I snuck into town, and during my exploration, I fell into a hole in the street that led me to...my master."

"Your master?" Marcie asked. "And who's that?"

"The Inheritor," the strange man said, in reverent tones, giving a fearful glance into the pipe. "He _created_ me to do his will!"

"Well, you must be an early prototype, because he didn't do a very good job with you. I was able to _freeze_ you the first time we met. I'm good with chemistry, but putting ghosts on ice? I'm not _that_ good. Not yet."

"And even though you can fly, and move things, I noticed, that night in Quest Labs, that you couldn't pass through solid objects, or become invisible when you want to be," added Ghostly Marcie. "You couldn't even go through your van. Some ghost."

An important thought struck Daisy, just then. "Wait! We've got the guy! G. M., how do you feel? Are you sprouting wings and a halo, yet?"

"I don't think it works like that, Daisy, but I'll let you know if I, suddenly, crave Angel Food Cake," Ghostly Marcie remarked, with a smirk, then she waited for the change that had long eluded her, but after a few moments, she felt nothing.

"I don't understand," she said, clearly sounding disheartened. "I don't feel any different, and I don't sense the other citizens starting to move on, either."

"Maybe, we're missing something," Daisy mused, turning to Sidney. "Okay, creep, what gives? Why aren't they moving on? What are you doing to them?"

"Nothing! The Inheritor..." he gasped. In his weary state, he was in no shape to be recalcitrant. "He told me that I was doing good! He gave me ghostly powers, even those _you_ don't possess, like the ability to consume other ghosts!"

"Yipee-skippee, he made you a cannibal. Why?" the ghost girl asked.

"So I can collect you," he snarled at her, remembering his dislike of her 'kind.' "So, I can give you to him. He said that _he_ could get rid of all of you, once I've collected enough of you spooks."

"Then, maybe this mystery guy is the reason why all the town's ghosts are still on Earth," Daisy posited.

"If that's so, then the Phanplasm was just a symptom of the disease, all along," Marcie figured. "We'll have to find this Inheritor, if we want to stop all of this."

Sidney, weakly, raised his hand to signal them. "Then, let me take you to him, just so I can explain why you stopped me from doing my job of cleansing the town, and see you get, rightfully punished, you meddling kids."

Marcie brushed the away the insult, telling him, "Personally, I prefer 'meddlesome,' myself."

Daisy grabbed his hand, pulled him to his unsteady feet, and guided him towards the pipe. "Okay, let's talk to your boss. I believe you know the way."

* * *

At some point in their sojourn, the pipe was sheered away by something massive that, smoothly, cut through it, and opened to an earthen side path that led them into a sloping system of deep, tubular tunnels that were all roughly the same circumference.

"Mole miners," an illuminated Ghostly Marcie explained, running her hand over the, still existing, grooves in the curved walls. "Kreigstaffebots used them to drill all over Crystal Cove to kidnap workers for Pericles."

"It's a good thing they're still intact," Marcie said, using Ghostly Marcie's light to study the tire tracks on the ground. "Apparently, our so-called ghost drove his van through here, recently. The tunnels are wide enough."

Daisy, guarding a sluggish Sidney, goaded him on, saying, "Since we don't know what to expect from this guy, spill. How did you guys meet?"

"When I first ran into him," Sidney explained. "He told me that he needed someone like me, and, for some reason, I-I just couldn't say no. He was smart, like a scientist, and told me about some energy harnessing technology that was in a lab he knew about. He said that I could use it to store the ghosts' energies."

"That explains the blue paint job you left on the doors of Quest Labs," Daisy figured.

"And the machine I saw you bringing from downtown," Ghostly Marcie added. "I saw another one just like it, when I passed through the back of his van. They must be some kind of spirit capacitor, made from the tech in Quest Labs, which means that you weren't feeding on ghosts, after all."

"No, why would I do that?" he asked, glaring in her general direction. "I only said that to scare you ghosts more. I want nothing to do with ghosts, except to get rid of them. Once I grabbed the tech, the Inheritor showed me how to make modifications to it. Luckily, the lab was haunted with a ton of ghost scientists, so I just gave them my Boogie Man act. Once I 'fed' on enough of them, the rest fell in line, and did all the work for me."

"By the way, your costume came from the Crystal Cove Spook Museum, didn't it?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah, I needed some way to hide my identity and blend in," he said, with a measure of pride. "The ghost costume was my idea, after I saw a picture of one of the exhibits in an old brochure of that monster museum. I called myself 'The Phanplasm,' and would scare everyone else away, so I could keep on hunting and harvesting ghostly energy."

"You said that this Inheritor gave you _your_ ghostly powers," Marcie reminded him. "How did he do that?"

"With his sacrifice," he answered, solemnly. "He, gladly, gave me his blood to do his will, but it's temporary. It wears off after a while, so I can never leave his service. That's why I couldn't hold on to Four-Eyes, after I absorbed her. Your giant wind-up toys weakened me too much, plus, the blood was wearing off."

The sloping tunnel, finally, opened before them, and leveled off into a series of connected ledges, roughly, corkscrewing around the circumference of a wide, excavated pit, littered with digging tools, and the remains of broken scaffolding, fallen workers, destroyed Kreigstaffebots, and what looked to be the burnt-out carcass of another van.

"So, that's what that dark stuff around your mouth was," Daisy said. "I just thought G. M. roughed you up a little, back there."

The thought of a slip of a ghost girl being more of a bad-ass than he was, tickled her. Then, another thought intruded, a disturbing one. "Wait a minute! You _drink_ that stuff, don't you? Oh, gross! Yuck!"

Sidney said nothing, as they followed him through the bottom of the pit. He angled over to another tunnel, off to the side, one that was far wider, and indeed, darker, than the previous tunnels, and whose sides and rim were perfectly machined and smooth, like a circular doorway.

"Well, that explains what was in those vials I found in that office," Ghostly Marcie reasoned, then, asked Sidney, pointedly, "But, what about James, that worker? What you did to him didn't sound like scaring people away, to me."

For the first time since he met them, an indignant Sidney stopped and, suddenly, looked pained and guilt-stricken before them. "I-I didn't...mean to do that. It was an accident. I...sometimes...can't control the power. I'm sorry."

From the dark portal, ahead, came the sound of gravel and rubble being disturbed by something heavy moving upon it. Then, a growth, a black tentacle, snaked out, slowly, and playfully batted at the air.

Before the group could reply to the sight, a large, baleful, green eye shone from the shadowed depths of the passage, studying the visitors, like a disturbed, yet patient dragon in his den. Then, another sound came from the tunnel, a sibilant laugh, bitter, yet laced with cruel amusement at Sidney's pathetic mea culpa.

"Come for more of my blood?" a voice asked, with a purr. "There is no need to apologize, Herr Merciless. If that little man kept interfering, he would have been silenced, one way, or the other. Guten Tag, mein kinder."

"Pericles?" Ghostly Marcie gasped, recognizing the cold, Teutonic voice.

"That's _Professor_ Pericles to you, ghost," the voice said from the tunnel. "And I did not expect you to stand up against me, yet again, Marcie Fleach. I would have thought that you learned not to interfere in my plans...after I had you killed the first time."

Fighting back the initial shock of his unexpected survival and return, she quipped, "What can I say, Pericles? You're a lousy teacher."

"Indeed."

"I'd love to finish plucking you bald, you mutant chicken, but now, you're going to tell us what's going on," the teen ghost demanded. "Why are we being kept from leaving Crystal Cove?"

"I can assure you, fraulein," Pericles said from the darkness. "That all of you are merely experiencing the side effect of my unexpected, yet glorious rebirth. As my pawn, Herr Merciless may have told you, or you may have inferred for yourselves, I am The Inheritor."

The sound of pebbles and more rubble being crunched, announced the appearance of Pericles, as he stepped from out of the shadows. The girls beheld a sheer monstrosity.

He was a black and sickly green semblance of a parrot, a newly, corrupted parody of his former self, now, about the size of deliver truck, with clutching tentacles draping from his thighs and lower half of his body.

"So called because I inherited a piece of The Evil Entity's power when he consumed me, so long ago," he continued. "It is _my_ influence that casts its shadow over the entire town, keeping all of you as my prisoners, and thanks to this murderous dummkopf, Merciless, he will have collected enough souls for me to feed upon, and marshal my strength to break free. Soon, the world, and this very universe, will be my oyster, my banquet, my plaything, before I cast it aside, and move on to the next, and none of you have the power to stop me."

With a flick of a tentacle against the ground, the floor of the pit broke open, releasing a cadre of the erstwhile Entity's birdlike minions, who crawled and climbed out to await Pericles' command.

The demonic parrot raised his head to let his voice ring against the ceiling of the cave. "Slaves, kill the human girls. Let all of their souls nourish me, but don't touch Merciless. He still needs to bring me the souls he collected!"

Sidney, reflexively, crouched to avoid being noticed by the creatures, even though they were ordered not to harm him, and then, he scrambled up the rough path of ledges to enter the tunnel system, again, eager to either serve Pericles, or to save himself.

Below, the bird-warriors shook the dust and soil of the cavern from their feathered shoulders, while Marcie, Daisy, and Ghostly Marcie stood back-to-back-to-back with each other, forming a protective, yet troubled circle, looking out towards Pericles' twenty-strong army.

The monsters spread out and encircled the girls, cutting off escape to all but the ghostly teen, though she was not about leaving her friends to face Pericles' wrath.

Marcie studied the creatures, quickly. They were tall, solid, strong, and menacing. They, also, carried a vaguely Egyptian-looking aesthetic, having avian/humanoid features roughly reminiscent of Horus.

She couldn't tell if they needed to breathe, being, supernaturally made, or summoned, so when she slipped her hand into her jacket for one of her Insta-Ice capsules, she plucked out a Discourager, for good measure.

Ghostly Marcie picked up an abandoned shovel, and held it at the ready. Daisy, for her part, grabbed a rock in both hands, and brandished them, confident that when the fighting started in the rubble-strewn pit, she wouldn't run out of ammunition.

"Do any of you girls have bird seed on you?" Daisy asked, in jest.

"No, but I wouldn't mind having a giant cage, right about now," Ghostly Marcie muttered. "And a big sheet of newspaper."

"I'd settle for a cat. Maybe, Mr. Schrödinger should've been the one to send us, here," Marcie commented, fingering the capsules to throw against the ground. Looking at their opponents, it didn't seem like there was a way out of this without a lot of pain.

"What I've got is pretty much non-lethal, but from the look of these guys, it might as well be non- _existent_ ," she sighed to them. "Try to make a run for it, back to the tunnels, but if this doesn't work out, I hope being a ghost isn't as bad as it seems."

"Oh, it's not so bad, really," Ghostly Marcie said, trying to take their minds off of their immediate fears. "Once you get past the hard part, it's a piece of cake."

The two human girls needed no help understanding what the euphemism for 'the hard part' was.

"We'll take your word for it," Marcie and Daisy said, in a worried unison, as the bird-warriors closed in, ready to rend their bodies apart.

Then, the creatures stopped, as one, when their sharp eyes caught a growing fog of glimmer surrounding _them_.

They turned their heads to the enclosing sight, and cawed in alarm, as they realized that they faced a larger number of citizen-apparitions coalescing from the energized mist.

Students from Crystal Cove High, Her Honor, the Mayor Nettles, civic-minded Mary Anne Gleardan and other former inmates, of varying ages, from the town's prison, the spirit of Sheriff Bronson Stone, followed by his fallen deputies, shopkeepers and store owners, families and workers flanked the bird-warriors with balled fists, brandished scaffolding supports and planks, and found digging tools.

With their captors' attention focused on the newcomers, Marcie whispered to her companions. "When I give the signal, make for one side of the pit." When she heard low acknowledgements from them, she waited.

The air hung like iron, as either party waited for the other to make its move. Finally, the impetuous Stone waited no longer, and bellowed, "Spirits, attack!"

"Now!" Marcie yelled, running pell-mell away from the mutual charge, to one wall of the cavern, followed closely, by Daisy and Ghostly Marcie.

They turned the attention back to the two groups, and saw that they had, violently, clashed to become one, with spirits flowing past the corporeal bird-warriors, and in most cases, _through_ them, to outflank the monsters, and strike them down.

Quickly, Marcie reached into her jacket, once more, and held out a handful of Insta-Ices and Discouragers to pass around to the other girls.

"No sense in staying out of the fight!" she said, as they grabbed a few capsules from her, and she held on to what was left to throw them, one by one, into the melee.

Daisy and Ghostly Marcie followed her lead and did the same, realizing that the ice and smoke wouldn't affect the vengeful ghosts, but would place a serious deficit on their more physical opponents, as once imposing minions found their strength in teamwork failing them, when they slipped on sheets of ice, or choked and blinked back clouds of irritants, on top of being pummeled back into the earth by fighters that they couldn't even touch.

Soon enough, the fighting subsided, and then, stopped, as the Discourager clouds began to dissipate, revealing a battleground of ice slicks, icicle patches and victorious apparitions standing over badly beaten, half-frozen bird-minions.

When the last of Pericles' slaves fell, unmoving, in the dust of the cave, the monster parrot peered down on the victors, like a Roman emperor, looked untroubled, even entertained, as his tire-sized beak gave them all a dismissive smirk, followed by a rumble of a laugh.

"Fools! You think that you have defeated me?" he chortled, his tentacles twitching, eagerly. "All you have done was deliver yourselves to me, directly! The last thing you will know is your folly, before I consume you all!"

"Not so fast, Pericles!" said Mr. E., stepping out of the crowd.

Pericles' good eye widened in pleasant surprise. "Ah, Ricky Owens," he cooed. "My 'owner' and my greatest pawn. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

"I'm here to help fix a mistake I made a long time ago!" Owens exclaimed.

"We all are!" Abigail added, standing beside him.

The parrot regarded her with wistful amusement. "Really? You too, dear Abigail? I don't think any of you are in a position to do that, mein freund. Even in my _least_ powerful state, I still have more that enough power to crush you all where you stand."

"Then, it's a good thing that I brought back-up," Mr. E said, signaling the other members of his Mystery Incorporated, Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves to appeared next to him, standing rebelliously.

Pericles noticed that one member was absent. "Hmm, the gang's all here, more or less, I take it. But, Ricky, where is your dear, sweet angel, Cassidy? Is she too bound to the place of her death to join us?" he taunted.

"She's still here with us, Pericles," Mr. E growled. "She's still here with _me_!"

"Let me guess. In _spirit_?" Pericles quipped. "Looking for one last chance at redemption, are you? _Gut!_ It will save me the trouble of hunting you down, later. Now, who wants to be the first...to die all over, again?"

"You're the host," Abigail growled. "Let's start with you!"

Pericles tilted his head, quizzically, genuinely, charmed that they thought that they could make him feel ill at ease with yet another charge.

A green glow shone from his body, and then, swiftly, seeped down and across the ground like a verdant fog. The old Mystery Incorporated and nearby ghosts barely felt its pseudo-physical tendrils caress and coil around their legs, already ensnaring them.

When other ghosts saw it coming and flew from it, like frightened pigeons, Pericles stretched out his tentacles to flank and outmaneuver them, snagging them by their feet or vapory ends, anyway.

Soon, Pericles captured most of the struggling ghosts in the pit, including a tentacle-bound Ghostly Marcie, whose friends watched, helplessly. Then, the true feeding began.

Pain exploded throughout their cores, and they all wailed, as one, in a chorus of agony, as the parrot-beast savored every struggled erg of their collective energy. He spared a contemptuous glance at a tortured Abigail.

"Nein, Frau Gluck, it will _end_ with me," he told her, growing stronger with every minute that he tapped into them. "Have you any idea how _old_ I am? I knew of my Annunaki heritage since I was a chick! I was, practically, a fledgling when I first dabbled with the Thule Society and the Ahnenerbe! My gradual exposure to their mystical artifacts and uncovered arcane powers granted me, extremely, long life. It is my destiny to bend the dark powers to _my_ will!"

He reeled in Ghostly Marcie, from the distraught Marcie and Daisy. Doubled over and shivering in anguish, the attack she suffered from the Phanplasm, felt like a fond memory, in comparison.

"Ah, little Marcie! You mentioned plucking, earlier," he hissed, with murderous mirth. "Let's see how long you last, when I pluck the very _life_ from you!"

"Leave her alone! Don't touch her!" Marcie yelled at the feasting abomination, dashing a Discourager by his talons, in hopes of distracting him from his meal. Daisy swung her shovel down, like an axe, against a nearby tentacle, which bounced off of it, as though it were made of very hard and resilient rubber.

An effortless swat from an unoccupied tentacle tore the improvised weapon from her hands. Another knocked Marcie and her breathless, and had them rebounding off of the nearby wall.

Turning his attention back to his former compatriots, Pericles chuckled, coolly. "Did you truly think your sad heroics would change anything, Ricky? I have won. I have even beaten The Evil Entity, for _I_ have taken his power for my own! It is over, for all of you."

A faint, manic screech of terror that sounded like, "Not again!" echoed from the deep tunnels above them, followed by a growing noise that thrummed in time to a beat of unyielding duty, and, wholly unexpected, irony.

Sitting up, Marcie glanced at the Signaler in her hand, smiled, and said, shakily, to a confused Pericles, "Don't count your parrots before they're hatched, Pair o' cleats!"

Pericles looked up to see Sidney, frantically, bolt out of the tunnel he had entered, minutes before, tumbling down the ledges, and screaming in a true panic. Close behind him, the small army of white Friedenbots marched into the cavern, following the summons Marcie had made earlier, halfway through their journey to the pit.

"Was ist das?" he growled at Abigail, while her creations, stiffly, negotiated the ledges, and soon, faced him and his fallen minions. "What have you done with my Kreigstaffebots?"

"They are mine, _Papagei_ , and I gave them an upgrade!" she told him, in weak defiance. "Attack!"

"Jawohl! Absorbieren!" the Friedenbots exclaimed, detecting the largest source of negative energy their sensors ever quantified.

In fact, so much dark power was radiating from Pericles, that their simple exposure to it, at a distance, was enough to power the robots' weapons and defensive systems, as the protective, Black Tourmaline-encrusted collector panels of their arm cannons swung open, and their coppery, Fire Agate-jeweled armor drank in the energy.

Converted negative energy levels maxed out their weapon systems, immediately, as they pointed their cannons at the large target, from point-blank range.

"Umleiten!" they bellowed in unison, and fired.

It felt as if white-hot pokers were, liberally, applied to a shocked Pericles, as his negative energy, turned and redirected into positive energy of equal measure, set his body aflame with agony, making him howl loud enough to make stalactites tremble like tuning forks.

He withdrew his fog and tentacles from his weakened victims, and focused telekinetic and energetic counter-attacks on his former machines, who took the tactical opportunity to surround him to feed on more of his evil.

In his fury, Pericles twisted and thrashed in manic, widening circles, forcing ghosts and humans, alike, to scatter and find cover in the tight spaces of the pit's interior, as the giant parrot-creature faced Friedenbot after Friedenbot, lashing out and snatching them up with his tentacles, bringing them to his brutal beak and carving them into parts, or crushing them under his strong talons.

Yet, he was still burdened by their sheer numbers, as other Friedenbots, who withstood his earlier energy attacks, replaced their shattered comrades, and continued to pierce and lance him with deep, torturous spears of positive light.

In the midst of his suffering, the parrot's heart jumped, fearfully, as the strength he stole from the ghosts starting to fall away, not only returning to its previous levels, but now, dramatically waning, even more.

He tried to spread his wings, and muster the effort to escape the hammering onslaught, hoping to fly into the darkness of the ceiling, and squeeze himself through one of the smaller tunnels to freedom, but the assault had sapped away too much of his power, and his flight and leg muscles ached, mightily, to the point of debilitating collapse.

Incredulous, Pericles found himself gasping hard, his focus and command of his powers, slipping.

How, he asked himself, with fathomless vexation, could these mere organisms, who were first laid low by The Evil Entity, now have the collective will to halt him in his tracks, and bring him to his figurative knees, so quickly, and with his own usurped tools of destruction?

"Stop...Stop this!" he demanded, feebly, over the sound of his punishment. "What is... _happening_?"

"It's rather simple, _Professor_! Energy is energy, ghostly, or otherwise!" Marcie explained. "Like what happened to your Phanplasm, your energy is being absorbed, converted, and redirected back to you in a form you can't handle. You were able to hold you own, until now, but these Friedenbots are going to turn you into an all-they-can-eat buffet, until there's nothing left of you, but a bad memory."

"Halt! Spare me! When I was consumed...by the Entity, for a moment, I-I've seen the wonders...of the universe!" he wheezed, under the executioners' barrage, barely able to stand on his shaky legs. "I can _show_ them...to you! Ich sterbe! You...You are... _killing me_!"

"What, the way you helped kill all of us?" Ghostly Marcie asked, coolly. "No, we're just letting you know what it feels like when some one tries to turn your town into his own personal salad bar. Auf Wiedersehen, baby!"

"No! Noooooo..."

The parrot was, now, too weak to fight, but he was strong enough to scream to the unjust heavens in bitter, fearful frustration, as Fate's gift of a second chance for everlasting, universal power was stripped from his claws, yet again, by the most unlikely.

Pinioned by the cannons' unyielding beams, and being laid to waste from the gluttonous siphoning of the machines' absorption panels, the green light of Pericles' corrupt energies, quickly, faded from his sickly, shrinking body.

It was then, that his twisted, physical form could no longer bear the positive radiance he was exposed to, and, with a dying wail, he combusted, into a golden, shimmering conflagration, giving him the appearance of a phoenix, but one who would not rise, again.

He collapsed to the ground, croaking in his misery, until finally, his demonic body could no longer hold its cohesion, and he shattered, before every witness, into glowing globes of residual, positive, elemental force that winked out, like fireflies, and vanished in the gloom of the cave.


	12. 12

_12~_

An old, appropriated car, a company pick-up truck, and a police cruiser from a neighboring town were parked in the shadow of the ruins of Crystal Cove High, while Marcie and Daisy filled the Chief in who the Phanplasm, ultimately, was, omitting the facts of how he was able to do what he could, as a fully rested Nova, listened to their 'report,' and sat, quietly, in front of the school's facade.

"But we saw him fly, and move things as big as cars," the Chief said, incredulously. "How did he do all those things?"

"Magnets?" Marcie suggested. "Very strong, clear wire? He may have gotten in touch with a stage magician, and rigged a lot of the effects he pulled off, but he would have needed a lot of electricity, hence the theft of your generators. You'll find them downtown, inside Quest Labs."

The Chief, for the life of him, couldn't wrap his mind around the how, but the mention of the stolen generators, made things sound more plausible with the concrete need for power.

Daisy shrugged, dismissively. "Your guess is a good as ours on how he did it, but, the important thing is that we got him, Chief. Thanks for just giving us the time to do it."

The conservationists turned to the desperate protestations of a struggling, handcuffed Sidney Merciless, guided headfirst, into the reinforced backseat of the police cruiser by its driver and her partner.

"Officer! Officer! You have to believe me!" he wailed. "This town is haunted! It's cursed by a giant, green parrot that lives in a cave! He had me capturing ghosts, so he could eat them, and take over the universe! I'm telling the truth!"

The two law enforcement officers gave condescending glances at each other, slightly, concerned about the mental state of their prisoner, and thinking about the report they would have to file, afterwards. They hoped that their chief would find it an interesting read, at least.

As the car door closed on Sidney, muffling his plaintive voice, The Chief muttered, "What a flake."

Then, he brought his attention back to the two girls. "Anyway, thank _you,_ for stopping that nut case and putting us back on schedule. You did James proud, today. I'd think he'd appreciate it."

From the driveway leading into the students' parking lot, an eavesdropping, unseen James gives the girls a smiling thumbs-up.

"Well, Crystal Cove can't clean itself up," the Chief said, after giving himself a stretch. "I better get this show back on the road. Thanks, again."

"No problem!" said Daisy.

"Take care, Chief!" Marcie bade him.

With the Chief in his truck, and the police cruiser, with a highly distraught prisoner in the back seat, both vehicles started their engines, and departed from the high school, leaving two girls, one Annunaki, and one ghostly teen standing amidst a crowd of other grateful spirits, all of them experiencing the first taste of true freedom and relief in many months.

"He's right," James said, walking over two the girls and their ghost comrade. "I _am_ proud of you, girls. You really got the job done."

"Aw, thanks, James," Daisy accepted, with a blush.

"We were happy to help," Marcie said.

"As for me," Ghostly Marcie sighed. "I'll be happy to put an end to this, once and for all. Girls, shall we?"

The girls and dog walked over to the non-descript blue van that sat in the student parking lot, unnoticed by the authorities. Abigail, telekinetically, opened the rear doors and brought out the two gas-filled cylinders, resting them on the asphalt.

Two objects, soon followed out of the van, a crowbar and a tire iron, both, gently, placed, in the two human girls' waiting hands.

Over a hundred ghosts, including those who, with the destruction of Pericles, were freed from haunting their locations, like Cassidy Williams, and Mr. and Mrs. Dinkley, filled that end of the parking lot with the, literally, breathless expectation of a New Year's Eve Countdown.

Marcie and Daisy each turned and faced their cylinders, almost, ritualistically, raising their given implements. Then, with anxious swings, they proceeded to beat against the strong, thick glass with one hand, and shielded their eyes with the other.

For long moments, the lot echoed with the sounds of their work, as the ghosts, collectively, willed the cylinders to yield, and glass chipped and cracked along its length, but the containers still held, until, finally, both girls, violently, breached the cylinders' domes, inward.

As shards fell into the machines, the sparkling mist of prisoners poured out, to the wild cheers of those present. However, as the mists began to separate into tens of individual spheres of light, they did not form into the customary shapes of men, women, and children, but instead, began to ascend.

"There they go," Ghostly Marcie remarked.

As they watched them float off, Marcie, Daisy, and Nova, faintly, heard the soft, distant sound of children laughing and feeling at ease. They looked around, in reaction to that, and noticed that every surrounding spirit began to glow from within, collectively, illuminating the parking lot with a growing brilliance that was rivaling of the noonday sun.

A gentle feeling washed over and through the girls and Annunaki, like a cool, invigorating breeze, a profound sense of inner accomplishment and peaceful calm, the polar opposite of the malaise they felt when they first came to this world.

Closer to them, amidst the old Mystery Incorporated's Brad and Judy, they saw Mr. E, lovingly, holding the hand of his Cassidy, her forgiving eyes allowing him to shed the heavy guilt and conflict that had connected him to that identity for so long, so that, in the end, he became, forever more, Ricky Owens. _Her_ Ricky Owens.

Angie and Dale Dinkley snuggled together in the sun, as the families of the Rogers and the Blakes took the opportunity to enjoy each others' presence without the stress of the predatory Phanplasm, clouding things.

Abigail twirled, girlishly, where she hovered, becoming more ebullient and emotionally buoyant, every second. She felt her time coming, gave them all a heart-felt, German farewell, and then, transformed into a small sun, climbing happily, into the sky.

Soon, the other ghosts around them gave their personal measures of sincerest gratitude to the three girls, glowing, and then, joining the other free souls, to be carried away on the ethereal winds.

Then, the quartet noticed that the sky was filling with globes of light, rising from every corner of Crystal Cove, like wind-tossed embers, or a grand fireworks show in slow-motion, accompanied by more sounds of grateful laughter.

"G. M., this is beautiful," Nova said, mystified.

Ghostly Marcie couldn't help but beam, inside and out. "I know, and where we're going, next, will be even more so. I know everybody's going to have a ton of stories to tell about their time, here, but I think I'll have that beat when I tell everyone what _we_ did to make all of this happen. Thank you for helping all of us. I'm really going to miss you guys."

Without preamble, the two human girls held her tight, and the ghost made sure she was corporeal to feel the love.

"We're going to miss you, too, G. M," Daisy said to her, taking a moment to wipe her moistening eyes. "You...take care up there."

"I will."

Marcie parted from the hug, and said, sincerely, to her double, "G. M., I had no idea how hard you and Mystery Inc. had it, dealing with all of this evil. You had to sacrifice yourself, _twice_ , to help put an end to it. You're pretty tough."

The teen ghost took the compliment with a grin, and gave one back in kind. "Hey, you're no slouch, yourself, Marcie. It may not seem like it, but you're tougher than you look, and I want you to know that whatever you're going through on your world, you showed me that you can handle it. You _will_ be with your V, again. I know it. Just like I know mine will come back to me, someday."

The bittersweet finality of the moment had gotten the better of Marcie, as she blinked away an errant tear. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Of course, you worry wart! Only you would worry about me, considering where _I'm_ going," the ghost chuckled.

Then, suddenly, a sensation of transcendent peace overcame her. She found a golden sun rising inside of her, and Ghostly Marcie could see, through no one's eyes, but her own, the infinite majesty, possibilities, and _joy_ of Heaven, itself.

"Whoa!" she gasped. "I-I think...I'm next."

She looked onto her friends with the deepest fondness, and said to them, "It's been great getting to know all of you. You'd give my Mystery Incorporated some serious competition! Hey, Nova, if I see the Annunaki, I'll put in a good word for you!"

Smiling, Nova gave an understanding nod, and said, "Thank you."

The humans and Annunaki, respectfully, took a step back to give Ghostly Marcie more room to fully radiate. The last thing they wanted to do was eclipse her, of all people.

"Boy, this place is going to be a lot quieter after this," the ghost teen quipped. "Oh, yeah, before I forget! I swung by my house after I talked to Abigail, Marcie. Go there, and look in the attic. You might find something that'll help you out, someday, and I think you can give it a good home."

Marcie looked confused at the last minute request, but she, dutifully, nodded to her double's ghost. "Uh, okay. Thanks...me."

The ghost gave a contented smile. "No problem...me."

"Oh, before _I_ forget," Marcie said, before asking her, solemnly, "Is there anything you want me to tell your V, when I get back?"

The spirit of that Marcie Fleach brightened at the gesture, and then said, confidently, "Yeah. Tell V that she'll _always_ be my girl."

Then, with a smile that reflected an eternal happiness, soon to come, the clever spirit known as Marcie Fleach, let herself go, transmuted into a happy, laughing sphere of light, and then, gently, floated off, to disappear into the warm sunshine.

* * *

Even with the diffuse rays of daylight coming in though the dusty windows, the interior of The Fleach home was dark and still, and the feeling of daily, private, family business, interrupted and disrupted by Mr. E and Pericles' machinations, hung heavy in the quiet, musty air.

Nova, patiently, lounged in an old chair in the living room, while Daisy took a step on the staircase landing, so she could be heard when she called out for Marcie, who hadn't returned from her exploration of the upstairs hallway.

Standing in the threshold of her double's bedroom, Marcie marveled at the similarities of the lonely room, and of her home. The personal touches her father and she shared to make this place a home, were the same personal touches she shared with Winslow.

Now, that things slowed down, and she had time to take in the world, the stark reality, not the concept, of alternate universes hit home to her with a private resonance she decided that she would never get used to.

"C'mon, Marcie!" Daisy called up from the bottom of the stairs. "Nova's ready to take us back! Did you find it?"

"Not yet," Marcie answered. "I'm going to the attic, now."

In the end, she made up her mind that, apart from what she was allowed to take from the attic, she would not take anything from this home that was not offered to her by the erstwhile Miss Fleach. She would not desecrate her memory by plundering this house for trinkets and proof of its alternate existence, like some raider.

Marcie turned from the doorway, and let the metaphorical ghosts of the house be, as she walked down the hall, looked up, and pulled on the cord that dangled from the door on the ceiling, releasing the fold-away stairs that led to the gloomy loft.

A small window provided the only illumination, as she crept up the stairs and entered the space. Like her home's attic, there were trunks filled with old clothes, torn and dog-eared stacks of posters proclaiming the singular wonders of her father's amusement park, threadbare walk-around costumes, ancient musical albums, outdated furniture, shelves of dusty books, personal mementos, and Fleach family heirlooms.

But, unlike home, where the house had power, and she could flip a light switch to see everything, all of these personal effects were displayed in the shadowy twilight of the attic, half in silhouette and half out.

"Where is it?" Marcie asked, in frustration. "What is she wanted me to find? I can't stay here all day, looking for whatever it is."

She turned to look near the little window, hoping that what she was meant to find was near a source of light. That was when she saw the horned beast.

With a yelp, Marcie jumped back, tripped against a forgotten knick-knack, and fell, while the creature's menacing silhouette cast a frightening shade across her.

Knowing that she was too far from the safety of the doorway, and realizing that the monster, undoubtedly, saw her fumble, she twisted and reached out to grab an old boot, brandishing it against the attack that was sure to come.

The creature stood where it was, practically motionless, almost studying her.

Marcie reached out, again, and, finding a token from a Creepy Spooky Terror Land attraction, and threw it at the thing, experimentally. It bounced off of its torso, and was heard clattering away.

The monster didn't stir, and Marcie's curiosity made her bold enough to stand, and, with boot still in hand, quietly, walk up to its winged, enigmatic shape.

She reached out a hand to touch its arm, and felt smooth skin, cool, with a layer of dust on its surface.

Pushing against it, Marcie sighed in relief, as she felt the stiff, rigid body of a manikin dressed in what looked to be the skin of a muscularly lean harpy, crowned in a pair of curved horns under a mane of wild hair, and cloaked in broad, tattered wings.

"What's this?" she asked herself. "A Halloween costume or another walk-around suit for that horror amusement park of her father's."

She was about to turn away from it, when she noticed a note taped to the harpy's bare midriff. She glanced at the letter, and then, stopped to read more, when her name was written in the beginning.

 _'Dear, Fleshy Marcie,_

 _Say hello to Dark Lilith. She's a suit, based around a local legend, that I created to scare Mystery Incorporated, so I could steal a piece of an artifact that we all were looking for, at the time. Long story._

 _Anyway, after my change of heart, I put her up, here. If you look on the floor, by her feet, there's a book, my science journal. All of my formulas, as well as the technical specifications of Lilith are written, there, including her strength and the secret to what makes her fly._

 _That's right. Fly! She was a pain to make, but she can do that, gloriously. Also, the secret to her flight is due to my greatest scientific achievement, which you can find on page 16. Don't want to spoil it for you._

 _Anyway, I want you to have all of this. I used her to setback some good people, now, I want you to help others with her. I know that you're the best person to do that. Use what I've given you for good, and knock the world's socks off!_

 _Signed,_

 _You-Know-Who'_

Marcie took the time to study all of the angles and details of the costume, from its form-fitted mask to its powered wingspan. It looked like it was large enough to fit her, comfortably, if she and her double's dimensions were the same, and yet, a thought nagged her.

"When am _I_ going to find a chance to wear this get-up?" she asked herself. "I'm not planning on scaring anybody."

She knelt down and picked up the small book by Lilith's boots, just as Ghostly Marcie wrote, and, absently, flipped through some of its pages. Then, she remembered page 16, and turned to it.

From the living room, Daisy and Nova lifted their confused heads to the sound of wild whooping coming from upstairs, followed by rhythmic foot stomps and gleeful cheering.

In the attic, Marcie found herself dancing a sassy, triumphant jig, in front of the Lilith suit. On a nearby trunk, she had placed the old journal, opened to page 16, and on it was written a, hastily, scrawled chemical formula.

A complete recipe for Marcie Fleach's long sought after white whale, the incredibly, elusive formula for Super Helium.

* * *

It was clear to Marcie and Daisy that Time was merely someone's plaything. Days had gone by in the alternate Crystal Cove, but when Nova brought them back to the stasis chamber underneath Sundial, it was revealed by a wall clock, that just moments had ticked by.

In fact, it was not that long since the girls' argument with Mystery Incorporated, and so, with their insistence, Nova escorted them back to Schrödinger's office, never letting on how relieved she was at their hard-earned change of heart.

"Are they still there?" Marcie asked the cat, when they rushed in. "Can we still talk to them?"

From on top of his desk, Schrödinger looked at the girls, and Marcie, in particular. In her hands, she was hefting a dusty duffel bag which had two large, folded wings poking out of its cinched opening, when Daisy and she reached his desk, and he tapped the button to activate the wall monitor, again.

He looked over at Nova, who gave him an imperceptible nod, which he immediately understood. Their gamble had worked.

When the screen displayed the gang, once more, Marcie and Daisy faced it, prompting the teens on the other side of the web-cam to, collectively, brace for yet another argument, so soon after the last.

What happened, instead, was the duo relating, to a soon-riveted Mystery Incorporated, everything that happened to them in the relative span of a few days, which to the perception of everyone in this office, and by extension, this Earth, was just minutes ago. This was easily corroborated by Nova, and when they were, finally, done with their tale, the two young women, boldly, spoke their peace.

"Guys, there's something else we wanted to tell you," Marcie said to them. "We're sorry. We were wrong. I guess we didn't understand, or didn't _want_ to understand why you left us, but now, I think we do."

The screen was a portrait of Mystery Incorporated in utter shock and bewilderment.

"You guys left to prove a point to yourselves," Daisy said. "We were told that you and every previous mystery group was brought together, basically, to serve The Evil Entity, to look for his prison and set him free. You were used by him because of your love of solving mysteries."

"That's right," Marcie added. "You were just puppets dancing on someone else's strings, marionettes of darkness, playthings of the underworld, witless clay molded into-"

"Okay! We get it!" Mystery Inc. said, in exasperated unison.

"Sorry," Marcie amended. "Anyway, you decided to cut your strings and leave."

Shaggy brightened at what he heard. "Then... like, you _do_ understand?"

"Yeah," Daisy said. "Sorry that we were so pig-headed that we wouldn't see that before."

Just then, Freddy spoke up for his crew. "Marcie, Daisy, we never meant to hurt anyone, either, and we were wrong, too. We were too hasty in our decision to leave without straightening things out with all of you, first."

"But, when we saw Mr. E's letter, we realized that we couldn't live a lie," the Great Dane explained. "That's what created us as a team in the first place."

"He, like, gave us a chance to do what we loved doing, on our own terms," Shaggy added. "So, we left to prove that we're, like, in charge of our own lives, not the universe, not the Annunaki, but us."

"But, we're still very sorry for leaving the way we did, and from what we heard, we can't thank you, Daisy and Nova enough for giving our families and the rest of Crystal Cove peace, at last," Daphne said.

Of all the gang, Velma, standing to the side of the screen, looked the most like she didn't want to be noticed. She looked reluctant to add to the conversation, as if the sheer emotion of it was too uncomfortable and too painful, for her more stoic nature to engage in. Yet she, too, finally, spoke up.

"And Marcie," Velma said, hesitantly, "If it means anything to you, our Marcie was a heck of a Mystery Incorporated member, even for a brief time, and we think that she would have been honored if you were one, too."

That brought a bashful, lop-sided smile to Marcie's face. It was high praise, coming from these heroes, and more importantly, this was the olive branch that was, sorely, needed here.

With understanding, Marcie and Daisy had an inkling of what Ghostly Marcie must have felt during her ascendance. A sense of the weight of earthly stress and trouble lifting from their shoulders, and a brighter future, with Mystery Incorporated, seen as friends, being more than possible.

"Thanks, guys," Marcie nodded. "Now, that I had a chance to know her, I can say that I think that she'd like that, and Velma, your Marcie wanted me to tell you something, as well."

A message from beyond the grave, unexpectedly, perked up Velma's sense of scientific curiosity. It was like receiving a present on Christmas morning. Would it be illuminating? Profound? Life-changing? She had to know.

"What?" Velma asked, with barely controlled anticipation.

"She wanted you to know…that you'll always be her girl."

The emotional resonance of that simple message was perfect, and Velma found herself moved to speechlessness. To the rational side of her mind, it was quaint, but overall, useless. But, to that secret place in her heart, it was all of the things she had hoped it would be: illuminating, profound, and truly life-changing.

Reflexively, Velma smiled, softly, but a shadow crossed that smile, as well. There was no doubt that those were her Marcie's words, and when she spared a glance to this world's Marcie, a pang of sad jealousy, suddenly, welled up within her.

She knew that when the time was right, _this_ Marcie would lavish her world's Velma with those same sincere and heart-felt words. _This_ Marcie's intelligent, indigo eyes would study all of her Velma's secrets, _not this one's_.

In that moment, those lost opportunities cracked open a bittersweet hole in Velma's heart that overflowed with the fond memories of a girl that, for good or ill, would continue to haunt her for the rest of her days.

"Yep," she said, a tear, wistfully, welling in her eye. "That sounds like Marcie, alright."

* * *

The known religious world had fallen.

Through a combination of a virulent plague, and a well-timed assault on the capitals and faith-based centers of the ravaged, old world, the armies of the so-called Undying Pagan Emperor had taken its brutal toll on all of them.

It has taken long and bloody years of conquest, but with the hasty capitulation of the last ruler, and the first diplomatic talks of nation-wide recanting in exchange for pagan medicines and food from a revitalized English trade market, Everest Greenman had, finally, done it.

Because he had warned the nobility and the commoners of the disease, firsthand, convinced the government to make those life-saving changes, at the point of a sword, and was shown to be right in his sweeping predictions, Greenman was hailed a national and religious hero.

One night, while looking through his history book, History, itself, had rewrote a section of it, chronicling his fomenting a powerful pagan revival and civil revolution that tore down Catholicism in England, as well as overthrowing and executing the king, his family, and supporters in the English Channel.

This, along with placing a pro-pagan puppet on the throne, and utilizing a special concoction that wouldn't be invented as a vaccine for centuries, to protect any who stood in the heart of the plague countries, allowed Greenman and his many, many, many followers to push for a lightning strike at a depopulated and demoralized Europe and Middle East, crushing all major religious and secular opposition, decisively.

Once the final push was done, he and his people returned to England in a triumph that rivaled Rome at her peak. Cultural, historic, and religious artifacts and treasures were brought to London, as well as, heartening news of druid temples sprouting all over the world, and standing where other houses of worship were once looted, or abandoned. All proof of Greenman's glorious achievements and military successes.

As a result, as Avignon and the other Papal States were to the popes, England had become the site of a new papacy, one recognizing Celtic religion as the one true faith that saw her people through the Black Death, with Greenman poised to truly become the Undying Pagan Emperor, the ruler of a global, pagan theocracy.

It was at the height of his power, that he spoke, warmly, to his lieutenants and most trusted followers, one last time, entered the deepest level of his usurped castle, where a strange, glassy pillar stood, and then, disappeared, both literally, and into legend.

* * *

Within the hidden Quest Lab Facility #16, when the cylindrical control cabin returned to its dais under the Time Arch, in the present, synchronized clocks in the test chamber had reported to Greenman that only two minutes had elapsed since his departure.

Technicians and scientists, who looked at him, as they began attaching diagnostic instruments into the cabin to read its field-tested findings, noticed not only his period garb, but his demeanor, his bearing. It was more regal, more hard-edged, and more dangerous.

Greenman took an elevator to a private suite given to him by his dubious partner, Benton Quest. After a hot, decadent shower, and a change to a comfortable, tailored suit, he reclined in a plush chair in the living room, and turned on the television.

Every channel he hunted down and spent time watching was religious programming, searching for lasting signs of his bloody and political handiwork.

Indeed, with a grim smile, he saw that most of the modern world was still unified under paganism, with reports that the other major faiths were not as, completely, crushed as he had believed, but had survived, ironically, as worldwide, underground cults.

A quiet knock on the door, prompted Greenman to bid his visitor, the mercenary Race Bannon, to enter.

"Doc says welcome back, and that, when you're done settling in, he'd like to talk to you about what you've done in the past," Bannon said, from the doorway. Then, he left the druid to his thoughts.

Greenman mused, as he picked up a business magazine. It was obvious that Benton was monitoring the changes made in the world's timeline, and wouldn't need to speak with him about it, unless it impacted _him_ , somehow.

But, it didn't matter, in the grand scheme of things. Events once considered too ponderous to manipulate were, now, swiftly, moving into place.

He flipped through the magazine, and then, stopped at an article concerning the latest actions of the business world's movers and shakers.

Greenman, then placed the book on the living room end table, and allowed himself the luxury of a good, honest belly laugh of anxious anticipation.

He could have stayed in the past and sat on his throne of theocratic supremacy, but the present was where the target of his ancient hatred was to be found, and he needed to prepare for that.

The magazine was opened to the article he was scanning through, and its large photo, proudly, displayed the unwitting power couple of Ricky Owens and his wife and Creationex co-owner, Cassidy.

His vengeance and their great sacrifice would anoint and usher in his reign as the Undying Pagan Emperor, in modern deed, as well as his followers' ecstatic word, in the past, the present, and for all time.

Crystal Cove would be served up to the gods, and, in the end, they would be pleased with this fortuitous turn of events.

Very pleased, indeed.


End file.
